The past repeats. Villages suffered “terrible losses in the epidemic of 1616 – 1618;" afterwards, Pilgrims landed in Wampanoag controlled land in 1620. The next events are common knowledge. But “Abraham Lincoln (who ordered the largest mass hanging in US history) used the theme of Pilgrims and Indians eating happily together...to calm things down during the Civil War when people were divided..” is not common knowledge. What’s more is, “We, the Wampanoag, welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end;...” is not common knowledge, either. The common practice of using fables of unity for political expediency “when people were divided” benefits the Dominant Culture.
...Norton, Katzman, Escott, Chudacoff, Paterson, Tuttle. “A People & A Nation.” Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 52-53. The Pokanokets (also called Wampanoags) controlled the area in which the Pilgrims settled, yet their villages had suffered terrible losses in the epidemic of 1616 – 1618. …
Uncovering the True History of Thanksgiving The Wampanoag Thanksgiving experience ICMN Staff • August 29, 2016
...It was Abraham Lincoln who used the theme of Pilgrims and Indians eating happily together. He was trying to calm things down during the Civil War when people were divided...The true history of Thanksgiving starts with a treaty. ..It basically said we’d let them be there and we would protect them against any enemies and they would protect us from any of ours...People did eat together [but not in what is portrayed as “the first Thanksgiving]. It was our homeland and our territory and we walked all through their villages all the time. The differences in how they behaved, how they ate, how they prepared things was a lot for both cultures to work with each other. But in those days, it was sort of like today when you go out on a boat in the open sea and you see another boat and everyone is waving and very friendly—it’s because they’re vulnerable and need to rely on each other if something happens. In those days, the English really needed to rely on us and, yes, they were polite as best they could be, but they regarded us as savages nonetheless.
Suppressed Speech
THE SUPPRESSED SPEECH OF WAMSUTTA (FRANK B.) JAMES, WAMPANOAG
To have been delivered at Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1970
...History wants us to believe that the Indian was a savage, illiterate, uncivilized animal. A history that was written by an organized, disciplined people, to expose us as an unorganized and undisciplined entity. Two distinctly different cultures met. One thought they must control life; the other believed life was to be enjoyed, because nature decreed it. Let us remember, the Indian is and was just as human as the white man. The Indian feels pain, gets hurt, and becomes defensive, has dreams, bears tragedy and failure, suffers from loneliness, needs to cry as well as laugh. He, too, is often misunderstood.
The white man in the presence of the Indian is still mystified by his uncanny ability to make him feel uncomfortable. This may be the image the white man has created of the Indian; his "savageness" has boomeranged and isn't a mystery; it is fear; fear of the Indian's temperament!
High on a hill, overlooking the famed Plymouth Rock, stands the statue of our great Sachem, Massasoit. Massasoit has stood there many years in silence. We the descendants of this great Sachem have been a silent people. The necessity of making a living in this materialistic society of the white man caused us to be silent. Today, I and many of my people are choosing to face the truth. We ARE Indians! ...
Our spirit refuses to die….
The common practice of using fables of unity for political expediency “when people were divided” benefits the Dominant Culture. How does this past repeat? This practice of using fables of unity is present in reporting mass crises overseas, while habitually ignoring mass crises of American Indians here. At a time “when people were (are) divided,” it is once again the American Indian paying the price for political expediency of a reforming party. For instance, “Most Puerto Ricans know, or think they know, their ethnic and racial history: a blending of Taino (Indian), Spanish and African. Students of the islands’ past have read the same account for over 300 years; that the Native people, and their societies, were killed off by the Spanish invaders by the 1600s. It was always noted though, how many of the original colonists married Taino women or had Taino concubines, producing the original mestizaje (mixture) that, when blended with African, would produce Puerto Ricans.”
According to the study funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, 61 percent of all Puerto Ricans have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA, 27 percent have African and 12 percent Caucasian. (Nuclear DNA, or the genetic material present in a gene’s nucleus, is inherited in equal parts from one’s father and mother. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from one’s mother and does not change or blend with other materials over time.)
In other words a majority of Puerto Ricans have Native blood.
“Our study showed there was assimilation,” Martinez-Cruzado explained, “but the people were not extinguished. Their political and social structure was but the genes were not.
“The people were assimilated into a new colonial order and became mixed – but that’s what Puerto Ricans are: Indians mixed with Africans and Spaniards,” he asserted.
(repeated with bold)
According to the study funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, 61 percent of all Puerto Ricans have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA, 27 percent have African and 12 percent Caucasian.
No more fables of unity for political expediency. Omitting “a majority of Puerto Ricans have Native blood” benefits the Dominant Culture. How does it? It benefits the Dominant CHRISTIAN Culture. For instance, everyone knows Puerto Ricans are predominantly Catholic. However, the fact “their beliefs, rituals, and practices often stray outside the orthodox boundaries of Catholicism” are not common knowledge. “61 percent of all Puerto Ricans have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA,” and the Tr*mp Administration let people die and struggle to stay alive. The hurricane was the Hotchkiss Gun.
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz and Democratic lawmakers have been among the most vocal critics of the Trump administration's handling of Maria, arguing the government was too slow to respond and stalled the island's ability to get back on its feet.
Cruz slammed Trump’s rosy assessment of the response in a Tuesday afternoon tweet:
The U.S. Government failing to uphold obligations to the “majority of Puerto Ricans (who) have Native blood” is one instance how those American Indians are paying the price for political expediency. Not surprising. Now for another failed obligation from the past.
Has the treaty signed in 1621, in which “they would protect us from any of ours (enemies),” been honored? No, for “Terrible as such deaths must have been, if the lives that preceded them were lived outside the Spanish missions that were founded in the eighteenth century, the victims might have counted themselves lucky.”
The treaty they signed in 1621, less than a year after the Mayflower arrived on Cape Cod and less than a month after the last of the Pilgrims left the ship for dry land, was the first formal written peace alliance between the Wampanoag tribe and the European settlers.
(Bold mine)
Pestilence and Genocide
American Holocaust by David Stannard
Terrible as such deaths must have been, if the lives that preceded them were lived outside the Spanish missions that were founded in the eighteenth century, the victims might have counted themselves lucky. Two centuries earlier the Puritan minister John Robinson had complained to Plymouth's William Bradford that although a group of massacred Indians no doubt "deserved" to be killed, "Oh, how happy a thing had it been, if you had converted some before you had killed any!" That was probably the only thing the New England Puritans and California's Spanish Catholics would have agreed upon.
Since “Evangelical Christians overwhelmingly support President Donald Trump because they believe he'll cause the world to end,” because they “believe that Trump was chosen by God to usher in... the “end times.” “End times” complete with “wars, disease, and natural disasters,” why don’t they just say what John Robinson said to William Bradford — "Oh, how happy a thing had it been, if you had converted some before you had killed any!" The common practice of using fables of unity for political expediency benefits the Dominant Culture and empowers fascists — who I refuse to call Christian.
THE SUPPRESSED SPEECH OF WAMSUTTA (FRANK B.) JAMES, WAMPANOAG
To have been delivered at Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1970
...Even before the Pilgrims landed it was common practice for explorers to capture Indians, take them to Europe and sell them as slaves for 220 shillings apiece. The Pilgrims had hardly explored the shores of Cape Cod for four days before they had robbed the graves of my ancestors and stolen their corn and beans. Mourt's Relation describes a searching party of sixteen men. Mourt goes on to say that this party took as much of the Indians' winter provisions as they were able to carry. Massasoit, the great Sachem of the Wampanoag, knew these facts, yet he and his People welcomed and befriended the settlers of the Plymouth Plantation. Perhaps he did this because his Tribe had been depleted by an epidemic. Or his knowledge of the harsh oncoming winter was the reason for his peaceful acceptance of these acts. This action by Massasoit was perhaps our biggest mistake. We, the Wampanoag, welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people.
What happened in those short 50 years? What has happened in the last 300 years?
History gives us facts and there were atrocities; there were broken promises - and most of these centered around land ownership. Among ourselves we understood that there were boundaries, but never before had we had to deal with fences and stone walls. But the white man had a need to prove his worth by the amount of land that he owned. Only ten years later, when the Puritans came, they treated the Wampanoag with even less kindness in converting the souls of the so-called "savages." Although the Puritans were harsh to members of their own society, the Indian was pressed between stone slabs and hanged as quickly as any other "witch." And so down through the years there is record after record of Indian lands taken and, in token, reservations set up for him upon which to live. The Indian, having been stripped of his power, could only stand by and watch while the white man took his land and used it for his personal gain. This the Indian could not understand; for to him, land was survival, to farm, to hunt, to be enjoyed. It was not to be abused. We see incident after incident, where the white man sought to tame the "savage" and convert him to the Christian ways of life. The early Pilgrim settlers led the Indian to believe that if he did not behave, they would dig up the ground and unleash the great epidemic again. The white man used the Indian's nautical skills and abilities. They let him be only a seaman -- but never a captain. Time and time again, in the white man's society, we Indians have been termed "low man on the totem pole."
Sunday, Nov 12, 2017 · 12:03:03 AM +00:00 · Winter Rabbit
The Massacre For Which Thanksgiving Is Named (Update)
My User Name is of the Wampanoag King, Pometacom
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Son of Massasoit, brother of the murdered Wamsutta, best friend of Tispaquin, the Black Sachem of Nemasket. All but Massasoit were murdered by the Pilgrims. Wamsutta was murdered in prison (without explanation), Pometacom (King Phillip was shot and beheaded, and his wife and children were sold into slavery to Barbados, Tispaquin was promised that if he surrendered his life and his family's life would be spared. When he did surrender, he was beheaded and his wife and children were sold into slavery to Barbados.
I was born and grew up a few miles from Plymouth, Mass. These are the historical facts we were deliberately not told when going to school. It's not so much that our teachers lied to us, they had been lied to, and they were just repeating the lies without even knowing they were lies.
In 2000, I finally wrote a poem to deal with my anger of how much I had been lied to as a young kid growing up in the home of the Wampanoag. It is here:
http://www.glooskapandthefrog.org/...
Below is the story of Tispaquin, the Black Sachem:
http://www.friendsofsebago.org/...
http://www.friendsofsebago.org/...
For those not wanting to click through, here is the poem:
Pometacom
By Douglas Watts
I was born on soil soaked with blood
Where the head of King Philip was ground in the mud
By the Pilgrims of Plymouth, and their first born sons.
They put his head on a spike and let it rot in the sun.
Shackled his children and family.
Shipped them to Barbados and sold them into slavery.
Now they taught me in grade school
About the first Thanksgiving
How Massasoit and Squanto kept the Pilgrims living.
But the teachers never told us what happened next.
How the head of King Philip was chopped off at the neck.
The teachers never told us what happened next.
How the head of Pometacom was sawed off at the neck.
The teachers never told us what the Pilgrims did
To Massasoit’s second son.
They put his head on a spike and let it rot in the sun.
The teachers never told us what they did
To kids who swam in the same brooks as me.
They put their legs in iron chains and sold them into slavery.
My name is Douglas Watts.
by Pometacom on Thu Nov 19, 2009 at 10:00:02 PM PST