A son of the People of the First Light shares a native perspective on history

By ROBERT BARBOZA

Editor – Courtesy of The Dartmouth Chronicle Back to Community Events Preview Page

September 26, 2007

WESTPORT — It isn't every day that we get a radically different perspective on our own history— the view from the other side of the fence in the conflict in New England between the early European colonists and the Native American population which was here long before the Pilgrims arrived.

Such was the case Thursday night, when Plymouth Manomet Wampanoag Randy Joseph, a traditional singer and dancer, and Wampanoag Education Manager at Plimoth Plantation, presented his unique perspective on the history and culture of the People of the First Light during a talk presented by the Westport Historical Society.

Forget the greeting card picture of gracious, grateful Pilgrims inviting their Wampanoag neighbors to a sumptuous Thanksgiving banquet in the fall of 1621. It didn't happen that way at all, Mr. Joseph suggested to an audience of 50 area residents.

The local sachem, Massasoit, showed up with 90 braves collected from local bands heavily armed and painted for war, he noted, sending a clear message that this was Wampanoag country and the settlers were allowed to stay and flourish only by his generosity.

The Pilgrims demonstrated their supposed strength and technological superiority by firing off their muskets for the natives, then the two parties sat down on the ground for a neighborly meal of fresh venison and turkey, explained the Wampanoag educator.

The original 100 colonists had already seen their company shrink by a third due to starvation and other hardships, and "if it wasn't for us, they would have all died," Mr. Joseph suggested.

It was a peaceful sort of generosity the Wampanoag would later come to regret, after being defeated militarily in King Philip's War and being virtually stripped of nearly all their land and culture in later years by the determined Yankees.

"We saw that they came with women and children, and we thought they came in peace," is the way his people saw the newcomers, and they tried to live in peace, Mr. Joseph explained.

In the 1600's, the Wampanoag nation consisted of 67 villages stretching from eastern Rhode Island to the Cape and Islands, to the Pembroke area, Mr. Joseph said at the start of his lecture on Wampanoag history and culture. Shortly before the Pilgrims landed, a plague had swept down the east coast, killing an estimated 60-70 percent of the Native American population.

Those Wampanoags who survived continued to live in a traditional, ecologically-friendly, spiritual culture based on "living with the land," Mr. Joseph explained, sharing their world with the water, plants and wild creatures their Creator had also put there.

They had no real concept of the ownership of private property as the Europeans did, and early land transactions soon became a source of conflict between the two cultures.

The natives generally traveled to the coast and inland waterways each spring for the shellfish, hunting and herring migrations, then drifted back to inland settlements in summer to plant crops and prepare themselves for the coming winter. When Yankee fences and stone walls barred them from the paths and campsites they had used for generations, more conflicts arose.

By the 1670's, the Wampanoags found themselves being overwhelmed by the growing Yankee population, and a long list of injustices against the natives led to talk of war.

When the Wampanoag were defeated in a little over a year, King Philip had been slain, thousands of natives were sold into slavery and dispossessed of their land or forced onto tiny reservations, and other Wampanoags gave up their native identities and blended into the general population.

The Wampanoag culture was nearly destroyed in the next few centuries. "We're lucky to still be here today," Mr. Joseph said, after detailing the eight small Wampanoag bands still surviving today: the well-known Mashpee and Aquinnah (Martha's Vineyard) tribes; the Assonet and Pocasset bands of Freetown and Fall River; a pair of Seekonk tribes; the Pokanoket of eastern Rhode Island; the Herring Pond band in Bourne; and his own Plymouth Manomet tribe.

Their culture at and just before the first contact with Europeans is now preserved through exhibits at Plimoth Plantation, where Mr. Joseph once served as a Wampanoag interpreter.

"We have the number one living history museum in the country there," he was proud to report, showing slides of real Wampanoags building fish weirs, fashioning dugout canoes, and building the bark-clad huts in the same way their forefathers did.

"As for the Wampanoag today, we're still fighting" to survive in a much-changed world. For many tribe members, the goal is to "re-connect with the land, and our traditions," Mr. Joseph said.

"We need our culture to teach our children to be proud of who we are," he added, especially in these modern times when interest in the Wampanoag is high due several tribes' high-profile efforts to pursue casino gambling in Massachusetts.

Many tribal members don't like the gambling bid by the Mashpee and Aquinnah bands; others support it as a practical means of protecting native sovereignty and re-establishing traditional lands for the benefit of all.

It is a debate that will probably continue for some time, the Wampanoag educator suggested, yet another cultural crisis for his people to endure and ultimately survive.

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