Preview: Peculiar and Superior by Dennis Minsky
Many people know Provincetown, but no one knows the real bones of the place quite like year-rounder and naturalist Dennis Minsky does. He has observed its abundance of life — animal and human — since he hitchhiked here in 1968 and stayed. This collection of his Provincetown Independent columns documents with compassion for his fellow inhabitants the rhythms, quirks, and delights of living at the end of the world.
The following is an excerpt from A Love Letter to Provincetown: Peculiar and Superior by Dennis Minsky, titled Looking for the Portuguese.
It is true that Provincetown was incorporated in 1727, but it was not much of a town then- more like an outpost. Historians record that, due to the lack of near-shore whales, people left in droves: In 1748 only two or three families remained; in 1755 only three houses were left; by the end of the Revolutionary War there was literally no population.
It really wasn’t until the early 19th century that the town began to develop, with the growth of fishing and whaling activities. And one of the major components of this growth, beginning roughly mid-century, was the arrival of the Portuguese. As the town grew, so did the Portuguese component. Robert Rocha, of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, reports that the census of 1855 tallied 77 Portuguese- all men- (apparently there was a citizenship question back then!); this represented just 2.5 % of the 3,096 people in town- and by 1895 that number was almost 1,000- men, women, families: fully 21% of the population of 4,555. Other sources say there were 2,000 Portuguese in town in 1896- but the point is made: they were a force. Almost all came from the Azores at first, and almost all came for the whaling, and then the fishing, which they quickly came to dominate. Their impact must have been profound. They brought with them (more or less) the Catholic Church, their cuisine, their Mediterranean attitudes and mores. They mostly settled in the West End of town. Mary Heaton Vorse (“Time And The Town”, 1942) described them as “island people”:
“Up in the honeycomb of back streets to the westward there is an almost unbroken Portuguese colony, where many an old man and woman speak but little English, and dark-skinned beautiful children line the streets.”
The Yankee contingent had to move over and accommodate these newcomers. Was this a peaceful phenomenon? Was immigration as accepted then as it is discouraged now? I am sure it was complicated. The Ku Klux Klan did have a resurgence on the Cape and in town back in the 1920s: a cross was burned on the lawn of the Catholic Church- I am told that the creation of the local chapter of the Knights of Columbus was a direct response. But Portuguese immigration continued and even increased into the 20th century.
What was it like to be Portuguese in Provincetown in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? I have talked with quite a few of the descendants of these “island people” in Provincetown who were here in the last half of the 20th century and into these times. Their answer: it was about community, neighborhood, family (and big families!), church. I heard about holidays (the door was always open to visitors- and they showed up), feasts (that bacauala dish, Kale soup, linguiuca), marriages (somebody was always getting married, and he or she or he and she were probably related to you), and cousins: dozens of cousins- everybody was your cousin, and everybody else was an uncle or aunt, and if you were a kid in town back then, and you cursed in the street or lit up a cigarette, a full quarter of town was authorized to whack you upside the head. Community. Sweet community.
But what about today? That community is gone. Many of the people are still here, but the days when the kids of Conant Street were their own gang (and when they most exasperated their teachers the majority of them would whisper oaths to themselves in Portuguese) are gone. There is no “Portuguese colony”, and that “honeycomb of back streets” is all condo-ed up and mostly seasonal. All those community schools- and even the high school- have closed. Almost all the graduates have emigrated, even as their ancestors immigrated. They may come back to visit, and when they do they celebrate what they had, or almost had, or remember hearing about. Where is that Conant Street gang? Can you hear the echo of the children’s laughter in all the honeycomb of back streets, even as adults they “sold out” and moved away? The why and the wherefore of all this is a complex of economic and social factors, all too familiar, not for discussion at this time.
And is it even proper to enquire about the status of a given ethnic group? What if I asked how many African Americans there were in town? Jews? Muslims? Hispanics? I think not. But what if I asked how many Jamaicans or Eastern/Central Europeans were in town? These might be legitimate questions to ask, because both these groups have brought enormous cultural and economic influences with them. So did the Portuguese- you can still feel it.
Each year I observe with irony that there are far more Portuguese in the annual Portuguese festival parade than there are Portuguese in Provincetown- far more. But many still live amongst us, and some remember bits of the past, and hold onto them, and have pride.
I am glad to live even in the pale shadow of a grand culture of “island people”, and I celebrate them.
Order Dennis’s book today at shop.provincetownindependent.org
For help ordering, or to schedule an author talk, contact Joe Beuerlein at the Provincetown Independent
joe@provincetownindependent.org | (508) 237-8381