Once upon a time, there was a little boy who lived in Princeton whose father would take him to visit the small museum housed at Guyot Hall. There, on Saturday and Sundays, his young imagination would come alive at the sight of the dinosaur skeletons and the displays of prehistoric man from Europe and their tools. His mind especially was captured by the small collection of Indian tools discovered right here in New Jersey. ##M:[more]##“It all awoke a sense of wonderment in me,” says Jim Wade, who still lives in Princeton. “It made me think about what these stone tools were, who made them, and how they used them. And this is what sparked my interest for the rest of my life.”
Wade has turned his life’s passion into his life’s calling. His mission now is to impart that same sense of wonderment about the fascinating archaeological finds discovered not in some far-off dig, but here at home. “When I talk to people I try to get them to imagine what used to be in their backyards. We’re so busy these days that we usually don’t have time to think much about history, but I try to get them to do that and feel that sense of wonder, even if it’s only for a few minutes.”
Wade is an expert on the Indians of Central New Jersey and has fashioned a series of presentations for local historical societies, schools, and other community groups. He also has a relationship with Brookdale Community College near Red Bank where he talks to college students about New Jersey’s rich Native American history.
He’ll be giving his fourth presentation sponsored by the Plainsboro Historical Society on Saturday, October 1 at 7:30 p.m. His lecture will feature slides showing early Indian dwellings in the Plainsboro area. Of fascinating local interest will be details about an Indian archaeological excavation done in Plainsboro in 1982 near Route 1. “When they were digging the Scudders Mill Road overpass they found Indian stone artifacts, spear points, arrowheads, ax heads, and tools, dating as far back as 3000 years,” says Wade. “Every discovery like this gives us a window on the past so we can appreciate the people who came before us and the kind of culture they had. We can compare their lives with our lives today, see how these people were different and at the same time, very much kin to us.”
Digging through Wade’s past to find out how he translated a child’s love for antiquity to an adult’s profession is a bit like digging at an archaeological site, peeling the layers backwards in time. Just a couple of years ago he finished a grant from the National Park Service through the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton. For almost five years, he transcribed or copied all of the Indian deeds of the state, housed at the New Jersey State Archives. The deeds had been formulated by the early colonial proprietors, the people who were slowly buying up the land in New Jersey from the Native Americans, the Delaware, also known as the Lenape. “Most writers on the subject have estimated between 12,”000 to 14,”000 people at the time of contact with the white Europeans probably during the late 1500s, early 1600s with most of the contact actually happening around the 1650s,” says Wade. “Most of the deeds were written in colonial English but some of the earliest New Jersey Indian deeds were in Dutch. That’s because in the 1600s, when the English took control, the Dutch had held power for a long time in areas like Bayonne, Elizabeth, Newark and the Delaware Bay on the western side of New Jersey.”
Before his grant Wade worked at Princeton University for 10 years. Six of those years were spent as assistant to a curator named Alfred Bush in the Western Americana Historic Map Collection in the rare books department in the Firestone Library. Wade also did a stint in contract archaeology. One of his first experiences as a field archaeologist was working on a prehistoric Indian site in Whitehorse, New Jersey, parts of which dated as far back as 6,”000 years.
Born in Princeton, he graduated from Princeton High School. His father, Alfred Wade, was a professor at Westminster Choir College who taught the theatre of Shakespeare and Constitutional History and also directed one of the first plays at McCarter Theatre. His mother is a homemaker who still lives in Princeton. A sister lives in New York City.
He attended Marlboro College in south Vermont, studying ancient history and the rather esoteric topics of Celtic culture, the tribes of ancient Europe and the formation of their language and culture.
Wade says that on the lecture circuit, he’s always found young minds the most impressive and some of the best he has encountered have been from West Windsor and Plainsboro. “Sometimes the children have little stories to tell me about things they’ve found playing outside or walking with friends and parents. I’m amazed at how much they know. They’re smart and knowledgeable and very well-read.”
Not just to kids, but to all who live in our historic community, he exhorts a Huck Finn sense of adventure when wandering our local fields and even our own backyards, especially around the Millstone River, because many Indian artifacts have been found there and still could be found. He says the best thing is to think of the river as the Indian roadway. “They followed the rivers and streams and their civilization grew up around the riverbank, so keep your eyes peeled,” he advises. “You never know what might turn up.”
— Euna Kwon Brossman
Native Americans in Plainsboro, Plainsboro Historical Society, Plainsboro Municipal Building, 609-799-9040. Saturday, October, 1. 7:30 p.m.
