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Wampanoag Life Before 1620 | |
| For thousands of years, the Wampanoag people maintained a rich, sophisticated society, using their wisdom and knowledge to live fully. Often, the description of Wampanoag culture in storybooks and related materials is trivialized and romanticized and even implies that this culture was primitive. Listen to Wampanoag voices explain that their ancestors' way of life was comfortable, stable, and one with the land. |  Hobbamock's Homesite,
Plimoth Plantation |
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 Linda Coombs at Hobbamock's
Homesite, Plimoth Plantation |
"It's amazing how one group of people can look at
another group of people and not credit them with the basic wisdom and common sense to
feed, clothe, and shelter themselves in an adequate manner. Give us the respect of being
Wampanoag people in our own land." -- Linda Coombs |
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| "We have lived with this land for thousands of
generations- fishing in the waters, planting and harvesting crops, hunting the four-legged
and winged beings and giving respect and thanks for each and every thing taken for our
use. We were originally taught to use many resources, remembering to use them with care,
respect, and with a mind towards preserving some for the seven generations of unborn, and
not to waste anything." -- Nanepashemet |
 At Hobbamock's Homesite, |
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"It is a seasonal-based diet. That is to say, as
fruits, berries, and flowers came into their season, they were harvested and consumed in
large quantities while they were fresh and available. Surplus was preserved by such
methods as drying, smoking, and the like. All forms of fowl, water fowl, and some
now-extinct fowl were gathered and consumed, such as roasted ducks, roasted geese,
passenger pigeon, partridge. As were all the quadrupeds or four-legged animals such as
deer, bear, moose, elk, raccoon, rabbit, skunk, squirrel." -- Earl
"Chiefie" Mills, Jr. |
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| "For thousands of years Wampanoag Indians lived here
on Martha's Vineyard in a series of villages consisting of circular, bark-covered wigwams
called wetus. They hunted mammals on land and sea and collected shellfish and plants,
fish, and fowl." -- Helen Manning |
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<< Origins | After 1620 >> |
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