The Newport Tower - some reflections, and a question

As an English mill specialist with a mild interest in the early
development of the tower mill, I have been following the discussions
here about the recent work on the Newport Tower. To set out my stall at
the outset, I believe that of the theories advanced over the last 100+
years, the Colonial Windmill theory comes closest to fitting all the
known facts, and physical evidence, without the necessity of
introducing a great raft of "ifs" and "buts" and postulating
otherwise unknown or unrecorded Viking voyages, Portuguese settlers or
whatever - Occam's razor has its uses.

So, my basic question is:

What, if any, hard archaeological or other evidence (evidence, not
speculation) is there that any of the individuals or groups claimed as
being responsible for its construction, apart from seventeenth century
British settlers, were active - at any time - at, or near to (within
say twenty miles) of the Newport Tower before 1800?

The problem with any of the theories other than the Arnoldist one is
that none of them fits with any wider proven context. At least the
Arnoldist theory has on its side the known existence of Governor Arnold
in Newport in the late seventeenth century; the existence of
documentary evidence that he possessed a windmill, and that it was
built of stone; and archaeological evidence for activity on and around
the Tower during the late seventeenth century (with, apparently, no
archaeological evidence for activity before that period except a
possible meteorite strike - you can claim that later works have
destroyed any such evidence, but it would have to be an impossibly
thorough act of destruction to remove everything before 1650).

I apologise for the oversimple nature of the following comments, and
also for any offence they may cause - such is not their intention.

Every other theory, it seems to me, is based on little more than
wishful thinking and, if I may say so, a peculiarly American form of
wishful thinking in that it invests an immense grandeur and importance
in any solid fact, or solid artefact, which might be shoe-horned into a
particular cherished theory of the earliest settlers (other than dull
old seventeenth century Europeans). The comparison is with
(predominantly New-World) genealogists whose concern is purely and
obsessively to find a descent - however obscure - from European
royalty, as though such a descent automatically makes Hiram J
Dirtfarmer III in Hicksville, Nebraska, into a far more interesting
person to spent an afternoon with.

This tendency to attach too much importance (in terms of the role
played by individual structures and objects in major events) is perhaps
symptomatic of America's unease, bordering on a sense of inferiority,
at its self-perceived lack of "history" (especially northern
European "protestant" - or at least protestant predecessors -
rather than Spanish Catholic, history) in the classic Western
hemisphere sense (only 400ish years), and particularly the paucity of
material evidence for this past (there are more 17th century buildings
within a mile of where I'm typing this than there are in the entire
United States).

Accompanying this is a rather naive impression that historical events
relating to early settlers (and, by extension, to Europe in general)
involved small numbers of people who all knew each other, so that
relatively mundane evidence which a properly cautious interpretation
might accept as, say, proof that Vikings were aware of the existence of
the East coast of North America and may have established limited
settlements there, is exaggerated in importance until it becomes
definitely Erik the Red's stronghold (or whatever).

Once this process has begun, any object - such as the Newport Tower -
whose origins are sufficiently obscure (or have been rendered so by a
century or more of refusal to accept that some things are just - for
argument's sake - mundane seventeenth century windmills) can, with
the aid of wishful thinking, be forced kicking and screaming into
service of a particular theory, however unlikely and however baroque
the leaps of logic required to cram it into service.

Gareth Hughes

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