_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 the Pokanokets, 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.