Early Native Literacies in New England: A Documentary and Critical Anthology

5. The Wampanoags

162 5·The Wampanoags The wampanoag people lived in settlements that stretched from southeastern Massachusetts (including Cape Cod, Nantucket Island, Martha’s Vineyard , and the Elizabeth Islands) to portions of Rhode Island. According to Wampanoag tradition, Moshup, a benevolent giant, shaped the coastline by moving boulders to facilitate his whale hunting, guided the people to Martha’s Vineyard, and protected them in myriad ways. Additional deities marked the Wampanoag spiritual landscape, not the least of whom was Hobbomok (or Cheepi), who provided visions for adolescent boys who were brave or strong enough to seek these visions from him. By the time of permanent English settlement at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620,the Wampanoags,devastated by recent epidemics,were living in a loose confederacy under the control of the sachem Massasoit. Initially eager to forge an alliance with the newcomers to offset Narragansett aggression, Massasoit saw the uneasy collaboration with the Plymouth settlers become more and more tense, as English settlers continued to pour in and the Wampanoags were increasingly displaced from land that they considered their own. The alliance crumbled in 1675 under the Wampanoag sachem Metacomet (known as King Philip to the English), embroiling much of New England in a major confrontation involving the English settlers and nearly every Native community in the region.The Wampanoag people were split in their allegiances, and by the close of the war in 1676 many mainland Wampanoag communities were fragmented beyond recognition, bearing the full brunt of the vengeance of the English colonists, who ensured the outcome of the war through forced deportation, enslavement, and execution. The Wampanoags of Martha’s Vineyard and its adjoining islands managed to escape this fate by achieving the extraordinary feat of remaining neutral in King Philip’s War. Martha’s Vineyard (or Noepe, as it was originally known by the Wampanoags), an island off the coast of Cape Cod that stretches approximately 100 square miles, was the homeland of a large segment of the Wampanoag people (and, after 1642, a number of white settlers).Although the Wampanoag community of Martha’s Vineyard was in many ways typical of the colonial world,its relative isolation from the mainland of New England and its extended relationship with the Mayhew family marked its unique history. Traditionally divided into four sachemships (Aquinnah, or Gay Head; The Wampanoags · 163 Takemmy, or West Tisbury; Nunnepog; and Chappaquiddick), the Martha’s Vineyard Wampanoags had, by the early eighteenth century, established Christian communities throughout the island, most notably at Aquinnah (Gay Head) and at Okokammeh (Christiantown) in West Tisbury. Through the intervention of Mayhew family members, who had a close affiliation with missionary societies in England,Wampanoag converts to Christianity had some of the earliest access to literacy training—specifically literacy in the Wampanoag language, The first school was established in the winter of 1652, and by the time Experience Mayhew wrote Indian Converts in 1727, vernacular literacy rates were probably some of the highest in New England. Despite the Mayhew family’s professed commitment to Native well-being, however, the Wampanoag people suffered extensive loss of both land and resources throughout the eighteenth century, as the population of the island shifted from Wampanoag to English colonial domination. Today the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) is a federally recognized body.Active on Martha’s Vineyard, it is committed to maintaining“original Wampanoag lifestyles and values, with a modern lifestyle layered upon the traditional.”¹ Suggested Reading Mayhew, Experience. Experience Mayhew’s Indian Converts: A Cultural Edition. Ed. Laura Arnold Leibman. Native Americans in the Northeast. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008. Silverman, David J. Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha’s Vineyard, 1600–1871. Studies in NorthAmerican Indian History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Wampanoag Tribe of Gayhead website. Available at http://www.wampanoagtribe .net/. Accessed 10 May and 30 June 2006. . “Aquinnah Cultural Center.” 164 Mittark’s Will, 1681/1703 This document was written in Wampanoag before being translated into English by an unknown interpreter (probably Matthew or Experience Mayhew) and entered into the records of Dukes County (Martha’s Vineyard) and the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1703.The English version included here is based on the Massachusetts Bay Colony copy that was edited and reprinted in Ives Goddard and Kathleen Bragdon’s Native Writings in Massachusett. The rendering included here, however, eliminates most of Goddard and Bragdon’s editorial...