Ask for volunteers to tell the story of the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving. She and her son have helped to incorporate the Wampanoag perspective into events around the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ landing in Cape Cod this month. A lot of the significance behind the meal has been created over the years, spawning many myths and misconceptions that Wampanoags and Native Americans in general have been debunking ever since. Much of the meal’s meaning was added in the 19th century, when the nation was divided over slavery and the Civil War, as an opportunity to encourage Americans to come together under a federal holiday. Trying to move that focus, as Michele Pecoraro and Plymouth 400 have done for their commemoration, comes with pushback — people saying they shouldn’t use their organization and the 400th anniversary to disparage the Pilgrims. "We weren't used to diseases here," said Hazel Currence, an elder with the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe, which lived in Patuxet. In 1616, before the Pilgrims’ arrival, a still-mysterious disease caused an epidemic that decimated an estimated 75% to 90% of the 69 villages that made up the Wampanoag Nation back then. Massasoit (who was actually named Ousemequin) was the sachem (leader) of the Pokanoket Wampanoag, a local Native American society that had begun dealings with the colonists earlier in 1621. After a decade of struggling to find jobs and fearing the Dutch influence on their children, the congregants sought a charter from The London Company to start a colony in America, although it was originally granted for land around the mouth of the Hudson River. Their role in helping the Pilgrims survive by sharing resources and wisdom went unacknowledged that day, according to accounts of the toasts given by Pilgrim leaders. We didn’t go away, we adapted. They were with a group of Native Americans gathered for a day of mourning in response to the Pilgrims' Thanksgiving, Suzanne Kreiter—The Boston Globe/Getty Images, The Wampanoag Nation Singers and Dancers, including Jonathan James-Perry (L) and Kitty Hendricks Miller (C) perform at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on Nov. 29, 2019 in Boston to commemorate Native American Heritage Month. “When she mentioned we’re all dead, that was devastating,” Peters, 61, recalled to TIME. “How are we supposed to improve on this sorry record if we don’t understand the sorry record?” asked Silverman, a George Washington University professor. By the 1670s Massasoit was dead and his son Wamsutta had died after he was imprisoned in Plymouth for negotiating a land sale to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1963, these two tracks crossed when President John F. Kennedy, whose family frolicked in the home of the native Nauset and Aquinnah people on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, immortalized them in his own Thanksgiving Day proclamation, baking the plaits together like the bread broken and shared in the mythic first Thanksgiving feast. His remarks were censored and he declined the invitation and made his speech instead in the shadow of the statue of Massasoit on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth on Thanksgiving Day. Then, early settlers and Native Americans break bread side by side. 163286925X. The native life doesn’t hold the same value. Linda Coombs, a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe, has been working for decades to tell the story of the nation’s founding through the perspective of Native Americans. Massasoit has gone through a bit of a rebrand in the ensuing centuries to be painted as the “protector and preserver” of the Pilgrims — as it says on the statue dedicated to him overlooking Plymouth Rock. The Wampanoag have survived and clung to their culture despite centuries of systemic removal from their land, destruction of their culture and denial of their rights. 'First Thanksgiving' Wampanoag Tribe Faces New Epidemic | Time On a parallel track, the story of the Pilgrim forefathers coming to the New World and founding America for religious freedom gained steam, as New England Protestants wielded the myth to gain the top spot in the country’s cultural hierarchy, above Catholics and immigrants, according to historian David Silverman in his book “This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving.”. secretary, which could help as well. The Thanksgiving Day Celebration Originated From a Massacre In 1621, though Pilgrims celebrated a feast, it was not repeated in the years to follow. “It’s not a fun story,” Peters said, but its telling brings the focus away from the white Europeans, the Pilgrims, and shifts the balance back to the people who were harmed. It’s kind of like a resounding mantra, we’re still here.”. “Even though it’s inaccurate, we can’t just bury it,” he said. But when you’ve been telling a story one way for four centuries, any change feels like a monumental one, she said. The Wampanoag, which translates to Easterners, inhabited the eastern part of present day Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The Pilgrims’ main concerns were their own survival in the New World and turning a profit for those who backed the venture. Initially, “a lot of native people associated firearms with epidemic disease because what they know is when Europeans show up, and fire their guns, shortly thereafter, people start dying of epidemic disease.”. It doesn’t start there because those things never happened, despite being immortalized in American mythos for generations. The tribe is one of several currently under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. When Paula Peters was in second grade in Philadelphia in the mid-1960s, listening to a teacher talk about Plymouth colony and the Mayflower, a student asked what happened to the Native Americans who helped the Pilgrims settle, the Wampanoag. But starting there ignores years of European contact with the Native people of New England, and paints the Wampanoag and their neighbors in the broad stroke of simplicity, ignoring the complex regional relationships and politicking at play. Washington's move came more than a century after the so-called "first Thanksgiving" in 1621 at Plymouth, Mass., featuring the Pilgrims and members of the Native American Wampanoag tribe. Wampanoag members were not even invited, but they showed up. He spoke English and carried a subtle message — the Wampanoag were ready for peace or war with their new neighbors, and the Pilgrims needed to make their intentions clear. Massasoit weighed the risks and concluded it was better to have the danger on his side than have to face it. Find out how the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Native Americans celebrated the first Thanksgiving together at Plymouth Plantation. In late March, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that there was not a basis for the tribe’s 321 acres of tribal land in Mashpee and Taunton, Mass., to have reservation status because the tribe supposedly didn’t meet the definition of Indian. As for that 1621 feast — the supposed genesis of today’s Thanksgiving tradition — there was a small feast, but the Wampanoag were not … Jessica Rinaldi—The Boston Globe/Getty Images, Biden to Propose Citizenship Path for Immigrants, Jack Ma Resurfaces After Vanishing From Public. “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and contrary to law,”. “In order to balance something like this, you have to swing the pendulum a little more to one side.”. When the Mayflower pilgrims and the Wampanoag sat down for the first Thanksgiving in 1621, it wasn’t actually that big of a deal. “At that point, it really changes your perspective.”. But there is a big difference between these ancient and ongoing celebrations and the Pilgrims' first harvest festival which led to the establishment of the National holiday now known as Thanksgiving. After a devastating winter during which many settlers died, thanks to Squanto's teaching, they had an abundant harvest. “If you ask the general public, even educated people, that's the most common explanation. The stories of disease ravaging the Wampanoag population, which so closely mirror that of the modern pandemic, are just one of many aspects that get left out of America’s Thanksgiving history. Or in 1614, when a Nauset (Cape Cod) tribe member named Epenow was captured by Europeans and kept in bondage for three years. But it would cost valuable warriors, in short supply after the pandemic, and there was the risk of Europeans returning in overwhelming numbers or, worse, sailing around the Outer Cape to take their guns, knives and armor to the Narragansett, according to Silverman. The Pilgrims spent only a few weeks of 1620 in the Wampanoag village of Patuxet, which they would rename Plimoth (now Plymouth), and they certainly didn’t step off onto Plymouth Rock. In March 1621, when Plymouth's survival was hanging in the balance, the Wampanoag sachem (or chief), Ousamequin (Massasoit), and Plymouth's governor, John Carver, declared their people's friendship for each other and a commitment to mutual defense. An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. It would have been a hugely complex situation. Hendricks-Miller doesn’t like to use the word survival as much. They lived in wetus, which were dome shaped huts formed of tree limbs and covered with tall, th… Now there are estimated to be 4,000-5,000. He will continue to celebrate Thanksgiving — something he and his family do every year, after the National Day of Mourning in Plymouth. Tisquantum, who spent time in Spain and London, would later return to Patuxet, and he and Epenow would play important roles in burgeoning Wampanoag-Pilgrim relations. “It’s somewhat ironic that on the 400th anniversary of acknowledging this point in history, we are forced to stay home and stay separate and feel that fear and uncertainty and some of the things that my ancestors were dealing with in a much more severe fashion,” adds Aquinnah Wampanoag Councilman Jonathan James-Perry, 44, who is featured in an online exhibit Listening to Wampanoag Voices: Beyond 1620 hosted by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. Sachems ruled by the will of the people. permanent protection through an act of Congress. But his decision to allow the Pilgrims to stay at Patuxet and eventually provide them aid after they were driven off the Cape, Peters said, had less to do with a sense of dutiful benevolence and more to do with a careful weighing of circumstances and outcomes. Wampanoag people have always held many seasonal thanksgiving ceremonies. Since then, Peters, a Mashpee Wampanoag tribe member, has promoted education about the real history behind the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s hard to separate the Pilgrims from what the United States would eventually become, Silverman said. “It would have been a hugely complex situation.”. When the Mayflower anchored off what is now known as Provincetown, the Pilgrims found themselves not in a vast, untouched land held for them by divine providence, but amid indigenous people wary and distrustful of Europeans, and the complex politics of rival tribes. “When we’re there together, there is a really profound sense of solidarity and hope for the future that all of us being together and listening to one another that that can lead to a better future to everyone.”, These events are opportunities to talk about the ways people are “thriving,” not just surviving. Without modern knowledge of how diseases spread, Wampanoags attributed it to the supernatural spirits and gunpowder. But while our nation’s inaugural harvest party was a crust-free affair, squash were a staple for the Wampanoag tribe that mixed with … I didn’t know enough then as a second grader that I could challenge her, but I think that I’ve challenged that second-grade teacher ever since. Author. The COVID-19 pandemic has only compounded the feeling of loss as participants remember fellow Native Americans who have died of the coronavirus, especially in the Navajo Nation. “I think if we can get people to come to terms with the history and the way it happened, they can start to look at Native American lives on the same plane as European lives,” he said. ", A nation diminished: Pilgrims’ arrival in Provincetown 400 years ago spawned a clash of cultures, Mayflower Compact:The beginning of American democracy on Cape Cod. Five weeks after docking the Mayflower in 1620, the Pilgrims sailed away to find land better-suited to grow the crops they wanted, and ended up in Patuxet, the Wampanoag name for the area where they established Plymouth Colony. Not all Native Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. That contact with Europeans “brought plague and disease and pretty much almost wiped us out, so it’s not as much a cause for celebration,” says Kitty Hendricks-Miller, 62, Indian Education Coordinator at the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe. Illustrations of what the first Thanksgiving might have looked like often depict Massasoit Ousamequin, the leader of the Wampanoag tribe, accepting an invitation from the Pilgrims of Plymouth to join them in a feast. Half of them died of illness, cold, starvation or a combination of the three. Wampanoag adults have memories of being a kid during Thanksgiving season, sitting in school, feeling invisible and having to wade through the nonsense that teachers were shoveling their way. 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