Native Acts: Indian Performance, 1603-1832

5. “I Wunnatuckquannum,This Is My Hand”: Native Performance in Massachusett Language Indian Deeds

[5] “I Wunnatuckquannum, This Is My Hand” Native Performance in Massachusett Language Indian Deeds Stephanie Fitzgerald On September 8, 1683, Wampanoag queen sachem Wunnatuckquannum conveyed a parcel of land on the eastern section of Noepe, or modern day Martha’s Vineyard, to David Okes, a member of her constituency.1 Ritually enacted on site, the ceremonial passing of land from one hand to another was just one part of a gathering that likely included diplomatic encounters, transmission of tribute goods and gifts of wampum, and even the arrangement of marriages.2 The ritual revolved around Wunnatuckquannum, for as sachem she served as the site of legal, political, and social authority. Lengthy discourses punctuated by “emphaticall speech and great action” by the queen sachem and other high-ranking members would have accompanied the events, as “skilled speech and status were interrelated” in this coastal Algonquian society.3 Such performances often included a ritual reciting of the genealogy of the land in question and mapping out the land through Native toponyms, with those present serving as witnesses. Thus Wunnatuckquannum’s conveyance to Okes was not just a redistribution of land but a strategic performance of the sachem’s power, wealth, and beneficence that served to cement bonds of kinship and allegiance in a time of political and hierarchical transition. However, the story of the land in question, Pachatickquset Neck on the west side of Edgartown Great Pond, does not end with Okes. Five years later, on July 15, 1688, Okes in turn conveyed the land to fellow Wampanoag Isaak Tuhkemen. Both records remained firmly entrenched in the Wampanoag oral tradition, and were not entered into the colonial English legal record until July 23, 1707, both written in the same hand on the same sheet of paper. Even then, the deeds were not penned in English but in the Massachusett language.4 In this way the land transfers at Pachatickquset Neck generated a number of texts (both oral and written) and performances that represent the divide between oral and print cultures and Wampanoag and Anglo-American legal systems—a divide that is bridged by the performing body of the sachem. Each text, each act, was followed by another, linked together by Wunnatuckquannum ’s initial performance as the “symbolic embodiment” of the sachemship.5 This embodiment was echoed through Wunnatuckquannum ’s choice of metonymic language in her ritual performances. In the first extant deed, dated 1683, she signed, ritualistically, as her own witness: “I Wunnatuckquannum, witness; my hand.” With the words “I Wunnatuckquannum, this is my hand” in a subsequent deed, she invoked the power of the sachemship as a whole.6 Reconstructing Indian performance in the seventeenth century is a complicated act in itself, obliging us to draw on disparate sources such as accounts of early colonists and explorers, archival documents in a variety of languages, and oral histories and traditions of contemporary tribes, our access to which is always mediated. As mediated accounts, they must be approached with a certain amount of caution. In [146] Stephanie Fitzgerald this discussion I proceed under a definition of Wampanoag legal performance as a ritualized act that transmits “social knowledge, memory, and identity.”7 Ritual is a dynamic force, always changing, synthesizing, and transforming. It orders the relationship between the everyday and the other-worldly as well as the political, social, and religious order of a community. Traditional Wampanoag legal practice was inextricable from the political, social, and ceremonial implications that made up the performance. Supernatural figures such as the thunderbird and the horned serpent, as well as other abstract designs, have been found on pre-contact amulets and pictographs, reinforcing the relationship between the Wampanoag and their cosmos.8 When Wunnatuckquannum redistributed land to David Okes in a ritualized legal performance, she reordered a series of relationships—between herself as sachem and her followers, between the land and the people, and between the collective group and the cosmos—as well as transmitting that knowledge to the witnesses and participants. Catherine Bell’s definition of ritual as “a type of critical juncture where some opposing social or cultural forces come together” is particularly useful for this discussion.9 For Wunnatuckquannum and her followers, seventeenth century Noepe was the site of this “critical juncture.” Wunnatuckquannum ruled during a time of transition, one in which English cultural values began to entwine themselves with traditional Native practices, and the Wampanoag land base was slowly but surely moving...