by Catherine Marten
And also those which should escape or overcome these difficulties, should yett be in continuall danger of the salvage people; who are cruell, barbarous, and most trecherous, being most furious in their rage, and merciles wher they overcome; not being contente only to kill, and take away life, but delight to tormente men in the most bloodie manner that may be; fleaing some alive with the shells of fishes, cutting of the members and joynts of others by peesmeale; and broiling on the coles, eate the collops of their flesh in their sight whilst they live, with other cruelties horrible to be related.
One of many fearsome prospects awaiting Europeans who would settle upon the American continent was thus described by William Bradford—Indians. In faraway Europe this simplistic view of the cruel and hostile primitives that inhabited the New World seemed adequate. But Bradford and his friends—known to history as the Pilgrims, who settled at Plymouth Massachusetts in 1620—were destined to see one group of North American Indians in a different way. Who were the Indians that greeted the Pilgrims and what can be told of their culture?
The Indians that inhabited New England are often collectively designated as Algonquians. This name actually signifies a group of tribes whose languages are related and are therefore classified together as members of the Algonquian language family. Speakers of Algonquian languages are not restricted to New England, however; rather they are spread widely over the North American continent. To the west on the Great Plains such tribes as the Blackfoot and the Arapaho, to the north the Naskapi, Abnaki, and Micmac, and to the south along the Atlantic Coast the Powhattan and the Chickahominy are a few examples of members of this large linguistic family. Besides noting that the languages spoken by these groups are related to one another, we can also speak of some broad similarities in culture shared by speakers of Algonquian languages. However, by the time of European contact both languages and cultures had diversified enough that Algonquian speakers from widely separated areas would not have understood one another’s speech and customs.
The tribe of Algonquians with which this monograph is chiefly concerned is the Wampanoags, which inhabited the immediate area around New Plimoth and from whose ranks came such familiar figures as Squanto, Massasoit, Hobomock, and Metacomet (King Philip). This tribe was also sometimes called thePokanokets, after Pokanoket, Rhode Island, where the Sachems kept their principal headquarters.[1]Because they were closely related linguistically and culturally, however, one can with justification include information pertaining to the immediate neighbors of the Wampanoags—the Nausets, the Massachusetts, and the Narragansetts.[2]The lumping of these groups for the purpose of more completely filling out a cultural description of the Wampanoags is further legitimatized by the fact that since the devastation caused by a plague in 1616 or 1617 the members of these tribes had intermixed to some extent anyhow. The Indian village of Patuxet had formerly been located on the site where the Pilgrims were to establish New Plimoth; it had been wiped out by a plague. The sole survivor from Patuxet was Squanto, who had joined the band of a sachem called Massasoit.
Political relationships among the Indian groups of southeastern New England were variable depending upon the leadership abilities and popularity of their several sachems at various times. Massasoit and his immediate successors seem to have been quite powerful rulers and to have held the several sub-tribes of Wampanoags into a cohesive body.[3]At various times the Wampanoags ruled the Nauset of Cape Cod. They were frequently allied with the Massachusetts and were frequently at war with the Narragansetts. At the time when the Pilgrims arrived both the Wampanoags and the Massachusetts were considerably weakened in numbers by the plague of a few years earlier, which had left the Narragansetts relatively unscathed. The Wampanoags seem to have recognized in the new arrivals a potential ally, hence the Pilgrims were welcomed, albeit cautiously.[4]
The pages that follow attempt to describe as fully as possible the culture of the Wampanoags as it would have been during the lifetime of Plymouth Colony—1620 to about 1690. A few words are in order in regard to sources of information. The normal procedure for gaining ethnographic information is for a trained observer—usually an anthropologist—to live among the people he wants to study, interviewing informants and observing with the aid of notebook, tape recorder, and camera the activities and habits of the groups under study. This sort of a systematic investigation, however, is an invention of modern anthropology and is a phenomenon dating only to the last hundred years or so. Long before that time, contact with the technology, ideology, and diseases of Europeans had so altered the culture and diminished the numbers of most of the Eastern seaboard tribes, including the Wampanoags, that such a study would have been impossible. To describe the culture of the Wampanoags, therefore, it is necessary to turn to the historical record—both written and archaeological—for the only surviving information on these people.
The best sources for information on Wampanoag culture are the journals and letters of travelers and settlers of the 16th and 17th centuries. Among the Pilgrims, Edward Winslow proved to be an exceptional ethnographer, having recorded a number of insightful observations on Indian culture. John Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay sent a collection of Indian artifacts back to England, some of which are still preserved in the British Museum. Of lesser value to the present purpose are writings of the latter half of the 17th century by missionaries who were trying to teach Christianity to the Indians. Their interests were in the progress of the civilized customs of a godly existence, and their writings do not focus upon aboriginal behavior. Information about artifacts and structures, often incompletely described by earlier chroniclers, can be added to by a study of the archaeological remains of Indian activity.
There will be omissions from the cultural description—questions never to be answered. But it is hoped that the bringing together in ethnographic format of what information is extant will give some insight into and further the understanding of Wampanoag culture as it was at approximately the time the Pilgrims encountered it.