DID YOU KNOW THAT NOVEMBER IS NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH?
DID YOU ALSO KNOW THAT NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY WAS SOME OF MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE WHILE I WAS STUDYING FOR MY DEGREE?
FOR MY Final (Sadly) FEATURED NATION, I’VE CHOSEN, THE WAMPANOAG.
Since I live in New England and all of the other nations I’ve chosen have been from the west I thought I should probably feature a northeastern tribe!
Did you know that the name Wampanoag means ‘people of the first light?’
In the 1600s, this tribe had as many as 40,000 people in about 67 villages that made up the Wampanoag Nation. These villages covered the territory along the east coast, as far as Wessagusset (Weymouth, MA), all of what is now Cape Cod and the islands of Natocket (Nantucket) and Noepe (Martha’s Vineyard). As well as the southeast as far as Pokanocket (Bristol and even into Warren, Rhode Island). The Wampanoag nation had been living in these parts for over 12,000 years.
Among the more famous Wampanoag chiefs were Squanto, Samoset, Metacomet, and Massasoit. You may have seen some of those names when reading my post about the First Thanksgiving (click here to read) or 14 Things You May Not Know About the First Thanksgiving (click here to read).
Culture
The Wampanoag did not live in teepees or longhouses like many of the other nations I have covered, instead, they lived in wetu(s). The wetus were doomed shaped huts made of sticks and grass, which made more sense for the New England dwellers then teepees or longhouses. The Wampanoag people were considered semi-sedentary, with seasonal movements between sites in southern New England.
They spoke a language often referred to as Massachusett or Natick. Although this language has been extinct since the 1800s, there have been movements recently to revive it based on existing texts.
The Wampanoag were known to eat what is called the “Three Sisters” – maize, beans, and squash. And women were responsible for up to 75 percent of all food production within Wampanoag societies. They also were hunters-gatherers who also went fishing and ate fruits to round out their diet. Each community had authority over a well-defined territory from which the people derived their livelihood through a seasonal round of fishing, planting, harvesting, and hunting. Southern New England was populated by various tribes, so hunting grounds had strictly defined boundaries.
The Wampanoag were organized into a confederation where a head sachem presided over several other sachems. The colonists often referred to the sachem as the “king”, but the position of a sachem differed in many ways from what the Colonists knew of a king. Having been selected by the women elders, sachems were bound to consult their own councilors within their tribe, but also any of the “petty sachems” in the region. The sachem was also responsible for arranging trade privileges, as well as protecting their allies in exchange for material tribute. Interestingly, both women and men could hold this position, and the Wampanoag had a matrilineal system.
Kidnapping of Squanto
In 1614, a European explorer, Thomas Hunt, kidnapped twenty Wampanoag men from Patuxet (now Plymouth) and seven more from Nauset on Cape Cod to sell them as slaves in Spain. The most famous being Squanto (otherwise known as Tisquantum) who Hunt brought to Spain, where he sold him in the city of Málaga.
Squanto eventually traveled to England and from there returned to North America in 1619. Sadly, he returned to his native village only to find that his tribe had been wiped out by an epidemic infection (see below). Squanto was the last of the Patuxet. A year later Patuxet became Plymouth Colony. This heartbreaking and gripping backstory of the colonization of Plymouth has been long overlooked.
The Great Dying
Between 1616 and 1619 Native villages of coastal New England all the way from Maine to Cape Cod were stricken by a calamitous plague that killed tens of thousands, which weakened the Wampanoag nation politically, economically and militarily.
The exact nature of the Great Dying remains a mystery but what is certain is that it was a sickness brought by way of European import that Natives had no immunity from or cure for. Some historians have suspected that the epidemic was smallpox, however, modern research points more towards leptospirosis. Sadly, it completely consumed its victims, rotting them from within and causing their skin to turn yellow and fall off.
The Arrival of the Mayflower
Researchers suggest that the losses from the epidemic were so large that colonists were able to establish their settlements in the Massachusetts Bay Colony more easily. By 1620, when the Mayflower arrived, the area looked abandoned because of diseases wiping out major portions of the Native populations.
In 1620, the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth, and Squanto and other Wampanoag taught them how to cultivate the varieties of corn, squash, and beans, the crops that flourished in New England. As well as how to catch and process fish and collect seafood. Squanto and the Wampanoag enabled the Pilgrims to survive their first winters. Squanto actually lived with them and acted as a middleman between them and Massasoit, the Wampanoag sachem.
The Pilgrims returned the favor when Massasoit became gravely ill in the winter of 1623, as he was nursed back to health by the colonists. By 1632, the Narragansetts, a long time Wampanoag enemy, attacked Massasoit’s village in Sowam, but the colonists helped to drive them back.
Things were unquestionably changing for the Wampanoag with the arrival of more colonists by the year. After 1630, the members of Plymouth Colony became outnumbered by the growing number of Puritans settling around Boston. The colonists expanded westward into the Connecticut River Valley. By 1637, they destroyed the powerful Pequot Confederation. In 1643, the Mohegans defeated the Narragansetts in a war with support from the colonists, and they became the dominant tribe in southern New England.
Metacomet or King Philip
If you’ve heard of one Wampanoag before it’s probably Metacomet (or maybe Squanto if you’ve heard of a few). After 1650, the Puritans began converting the native tribes to Christianity. Likely, the high level of epidemics the Native population had experienced up to this point had motivated some to convert.
Massasoit (the Wampanoag sachem) was among those who adopted colonial customs. He asked the legislators in Plymouth near the end of his life to give both of his son’s English names. The older son Wamsutta was given the name Alexander, and his younger brother Metacom was named Philip. Some seriously shady stuff happened after Massasoit’s death. The colonists invited Wamsutta/Alexander (the new sachem) to Plymouth to talk, but Wamsutta became seriously ill on the way home and died shortly after. The Wampanoag were told that he died of a fever, but many suspected that he had been poisoned. The following year, his brother Philip (Metacom) became sachem of the Wampanoag.
Under Philip’s leadership, the relationship radically changed between the Wampanoag and the colonists. Philip believed that the increasing number of colonists would eventually take over everything. And right he was, he worried that they would take over not only land, but also their culture, their way of life, and their religion, and he decided to limit the further development of colonial settlements. The Wampanoag numbered only 1,000 by this time, and Philip began to visit other tribes to build alliances among those who also wanted to push out the colonists. By that time, the number of colonists in southern New England staggeringly out-numbered that of the Native people —35,000 vs. 15,000.
King Philip’s War
Philip gradually gained the Nipmuck, Pocomtuc, and even the Narragansett as allies, and the beginning of the uprising was first planned for the spring of 1676. However, after the murder of a Christianized Wampanoag, John Sassaman, who just happened to serve as a scribe, interpreter, and counselor to Philip and the Wampanoag, things really began to heat up.
You see, Sassaman’s death was blamed on 3 Wampanoag and they were hanged in June 1675 after a trial by a jury of 12 colonists and six Christian Indians. These executions were 100% a catalyst for war. Not only that but there had been rumors circulating that the colonists were going to attempt to capture Philip. Most of his allied tribes decided to join him, except for the Narragansett who remained neutral at the beginning of the war.
On June 20, 1675, the Wampanoags attacked colonists in Swansea, Massachusetts and laid siege to the town. They destroyed the town completely five days later, which officially began what would later be called King Philip’s War. The united tribes in southern New England attacked 52 of 90 colonial settlements and partially burned all of them down.
Interestingly, at the outbreak of the war, many Natives offered to fight with the colonists against King Philip and his allies, serving as invaluable warriors, scouts, advisers, and spies. However, mistrust and hostility eventually caused the colonists to discontinue Native assistance, even though they were instrumental in the war. The Massachusetts government even went as far as to move many “Christian Indians” to Deer Island in Boston Harbor. In part to protect the “praying Indians” from vigilantes, but also as a precautionary measure to prevent rebellion and sedition from them.
The Spread of War
Soon the war spread to other parts of New England, the Kennebec, Pigwacket (Pequawkets), and Arosaguntacook from Maine joined in the war against the colonists. The Narragansetts gave up their neutrality after the colonists attacked one of their villages. They lost more than 600 people and 20 sachems in the battle which became known as the “Great Swamp Massacre”. Their leader Canonchet was able to flee and led a large group of Narragansett warriors west to join King Philip’s warriors.
Things got worse for King Philip around the spring of 1676, following a hard winter of hunger and deprivation. Colonial troops set out after him, and Canonchet (the Narragansett sachem) was taken captive and executed by a firing squad. Sadly, Canonchet’s corpse was quartered, and his head was sent to Hartford, Connecticut and put on public display.
The End of War and…
The war didn’t end much better for the infamous King Philip, during the summer months of 1676, Philip escaped his pursuers and went to a hideout on Mount Hope in Rhode Island. Colonial forces attacked in August, killing and capturing 173 Wampanoags. Philip barely escaped capture, but his wife and their nine-year-old son were captured and put on a ship at Plymouth; they were later sold as slaves in the West Indies. On August 12, 1676, colonial troops surrounded Philip’s camp and soon shot and killed him. Approximately 5,000 Natives, 40% of their population, and around 2,500 colonists, 5%, were killed in King Philip’s War.
With the death of Philip and most of their leaders, the Wampanoags were nearly exterminated; only about 400 survived the war. The Narragansetts and Nipmucks suffered similar losses, and many small tribes in southern New England were completely finished. Also, many Wampanoag were sold into slavery. Male captives were generally sold to slave traders and transported to the West Indies, Bermuda, and Virginia. The colonists generally used the women and children as slaves or indentured servants in New England, depending on the colony.
Today, about 3,000 Wampanoag still live in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. There is a reservation for the Wampanoag on Martha’s Vineyard that was set up by the United States government.
Resources
http://indians.org/articles/wampanoag-indians.html
https://www.plimoth.org/learn/just-kids/homework-help/who-are-wampanoag
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wampanoag
I’ve really enjoyed doing these featured Native American Heritage Month posts and can’t wait to pick them up again next year! Until then…
Like this post? Pin it for later!
