| Successful Survival | ||
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| In the 18th and 19th centuries, despite poverty, illness, and prejudice, Wampanoag communities and traditions endured. Although the Wampanaog are not mentioned in textbooks after the late 17th century, the Wampanoag continue to live and work in their homeland. Listen as Wampanoag people describe their pain, their fight for Native rights, and their economic and cultural survival. |  |
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| Economic and Cultural Survival | ||
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| "When mum was a little girl, they used to take
tourists from the boat and take them up to the cliffs with oxen... and when I was a kid we
used to take stands, and go sell on the banks. We would sit out near the paths and sell to
the tourists." -- Gladys Widdiss "I used to drive the oxen and everything. Used to go everywhere with them, used to hay and plow the fields with Grandpa. Oh, loads of fun." -- Minnie Malonson |
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"Since as early as I can remember, my
heart was set on going whaling. I was born at Gay Head in 1877, a few years after it
ceased to be an Indian reservation. We were only twelve miles from New Bedford, the center
of the whaling industry." -- Amos Smalley |
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| Oppression and Resistance | ||
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| Excerpt from a letter to the Governor about
the overseers, June 11, 1752 "We poor Indians in Mashpee, in Barnstable county, we truly are much troubled by these English neighbors of ours being on this land of ours, and in our marsh and trees. Against our will these Englishmen take away from us what was our land. They parcel it out to each other, and the marsh along with it against our will. And as for our streams, they do not allow us peacefully to be when we peacefully go fishing. They beat us greatly, and they have houses on our land against our will." |
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 Photo courtesy American Antiquarian Society |
"The land of my fathers was gone; and their characters
were not known as human beings but as beasts of prey. We were represented as having no
souls to save, or to lose, but as partridges upon the mountains. All these degrading
titles were heaped upon us. Thus, you see, we had to bear all this tide of
degradation." -- William Apess |
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| "It was a legislative act that kept the Mashpee
Indians from learning to read and write. An Act of 1789, Sec 5, the Regulations of the
Plantation. Prohibiting instruction of a Mashpee in reading and writing under the pain of
death. My grandmother, she did know how to read and write but there were so many that
didn't because it wasn't allowed. After a while they did vote for a certain amount of
money to go to schools in Mashpee, in later years." -- Mable L. Avant |
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See Also:
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