The Silence of Massasoit

Four hundred years ago the Mayflower and Speedwell set sail from the port of Plymouth, England. The Speedwell turned back, but the Mayflower came to rest in an area of New England known as Patuxet. The ship carried 102 passengers, most of whom William Bradford called “Pilgrims”, and about 30 crew members. This was a seminal moment in the history of our country for many reasons.

Much of what we experience today was present at Plimoth – our desperate hunger for liberty, our courageous willingness to sacrifice everything for it, our yearning for a church and community governed by and for the people, and, sadly, our deeply destructive if often unconscious convictions of white supremacy.

The year was 1620. The Pilgrims, our direct spiritual ancestors, were fleeing religious persecution. They had rejected creeds, hierarchies, and coercive religion. They believed there always is “more truth” to be discovered by faithful people. They embraced covenanting as the proper way to organize - first a church, and then a civil society.

Years earlier they had established an underground congregation in Nottinghamshire, England. They had transported it to Leyden, Holland. Finally, they brought it to what is now Massachusetts. The local church they established continues to worship and serve to this day. It is known as the First Parish in Plymouth – a Unitarian Universalist congregation.

It is right and fitting that we reflect on that historic moment. To do so I will share several vignettes, all related, in which we can judge for ourselves the changing appraisals of our heritage.

Vignette One:

In the late 1970s, in a large downtown church in Minneapolis, nearly 50 women formed a highly talented group called “The Needlers”. A section of the church building was set aside as “The Stitchery”. “Needlers” had to take classes and pass an exam before they could work on a large embroidery. Over a period of more than three years, they created a massive embroidery, 16’tall by 25’ wide, designed by the British artist, Pauline Baynes. It became the centerpiece of the church’s newly renovated Guild Hall. At the center of this embroidery is the scene of “The First Thanksgiving” at Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts.

Years passed. The Needlers stitched new embroideries and fiber art. Today their creations are a “must see” stop on every city tour. There are now four large embroideries and many smaller ones, but the original “First Thanksgiving” remains the defining piece of the whole endeavor.

Except it isn’t.

A year ago this month, in a contentious congregational meeting, after months of study and conversation, the members voted 372 to 189 to retire their beloved embroidery indefinitely.

Why?

The Thanksgiving meal depicted in this embroidery is viewed by most Native Americans as a stereotypical and sanitized version of the real story. For American Indians, it points to a bitter history of conquest and betrayal. After many years, the church finally heard the justified grievances of their indigenous neighbors. They listened to the deep pain this embroidery both depicted and inflicted. In a costly gesture of repentance and reconciliation, they removed it.

Vignette Two:

Fifty years ago, it was decided to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the Mayflower’s arrival with a huge festival at Plimoth Plantation, the “living history” museum in Massachusetts that replicates the original settlement of Pilgrims. A Wampanoag elder, Frank (Wamsutta) James, was invited by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to participate in the commemoration. He was expected to talk about the “friendly relations” between the Wampanoag Indians and the Pilgrims.

The speech he wrote was not entirely negative but, in real friendship, real truth must prevail. It recounted the years of betrayal, death and loss of land. When the text of Mr. James’s speech was reviewed by the planners sometime before the dinner, it was rejected. A new speech was written for him. He refused the substitution, and the organizers "disinvited" him from the celebration.

Frank James and other Wampanoag guests walked out. They walked up the hill to a statue of Massasoit. Massasoit was the Wampanoag leader who helped the exhausted settlers survive their first New England winter. Under his leadership, the Wampanoags taught the Pilgrims how to plant and fish in their new home.

Massasoit had strategic motives for welcoming the Pilgrims, no doubt, but he genuinely believed that Indians and Whites could find a way to live together in peace. The Wampanoag are the Indians depicted in “The First Thanksgiving” by Pauline Baynes and celebrated in the Plymouth Church embroidery.

When the pilgrims arrived, they did not “discover” a vast and empty wilderness inhabited only by untamed savages. The Wampanoag were just one group that had lived on this land for more than 12,000 years. Known as “The People of the First Light”, they were part of a civilization that had existed for centuries. Many tribes and nations had created a complex web of relationships with its own economy, laws, culture, art, sports, and spirituality.

A full century before the Pilgrims landed at Patuxet, other Europeans had explored and traded with indigenous peoples in the area. They also had robbed them, imported lethal diseases and took native people as slaves.

The indigenous economic and social networks that had lasted for centuries had been strained to the breaking point by these marauders. The years 1613 to 1619 were especially harsh. They are known to this day as “The Great Dying”. Whole villages succumbed. Over time, the Wampanoag had been reduced from as many as 40,000 people to as few as 400. They needed peace more than conflict, and allies more than enemies.

This was the context in which Massasoit rose to leadership. His wisdom had been forged in the cauldron of suffering that preceded the Mayflower’s arrival. He had seen the benefits and destruction left by these European explorations, yet he still believed in co-existence.

The brave and hardy Pilgrims also had lost more than half their company that first year. We honor them for their ideals, and for their courage and sacrifice. Yet sadly, they contributed another stream to American culture: a 17th Century version of white supremacy.

The Pilgrims were certain that they were destined to occupy this land. They believed that they were superior to the people they encountered here. Governor William Bradford even attributed the plagues and hardships the Indians had so recently endured to what he called “the good hand of God,” who, he said, “favored our beginnings” by “sweeping away great multitudes of the natives...that He (God) might make room for us.”

More than 50 of the first colonial villages were located where Indian communities had been emptied by disease. The epidemic, another settler wrote, left the land “without any [people] to disturb or appease our free and peaceable possession thereof, from whence we may justly conclude, that God made the way to effect His work.”

Was this the beginning of “manifest” destiny? Did White Anglo-Saxon Protestant privilege arrive with the Bibles and blunderbusses?

Sadly, these two peoples – Indian and European - never saw beyond their own needs and alliances, never really saw and heard the humanity of each other.

Yes, there was a harvest celebration. The Plymouth Needlers were right about that.

Yes, Massasoit came, accompanied by 90 of his compatriots. They outnumbered the surviving Pilgrims, two-to-one.

Yes, the Pilgrims shared an abundant harvest with their guests, and yes, the Indians brought wild game to the party.

Massasoit had a vision of peoples living together in peace. Yet only a generation later, children who played together at this feast were at war to the death with one another. The massive influx of European colonists led to a war of expansion that became a war of survival for the indigenous peoples. Historians tell us that "King Philip's War" as it was called was the bloodiest conflict ever to have been waged on American soil. Hundreds of colonists died. Dozens of English settlements were destroyed. Thousands of Indians were killed, wounded, or captured and sold into slavery. Their ancient civilization was shattered.

350 years later, now standing by the statue of Massasoit, Frank Wamsutta James could see a replica of the Mayflower bobbing calmly in Plymouth Harbor. He and his audience overlooked the very land where this tragedy descended upon their ancestors. With the Psalmist they may have thought, “a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday, when it is past.” 

There he delivered his speech. Ever since that time - fifty years ago - many native people across the continent have observed Thanksgiving Day as their Annual Day of Mourning.

Vignette Three:

Fast forward to the “Covided” year of 2020. It is now the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower from the small town of Plymouth in England to the icy New England shores. A replica of the Mayflower again would sail. The drama of those first years would be re-enacted. But this time the people planning the commemoration included descendants of the original Wampanoag in the research, planning, and retelling of the stories. It would be a multi-cultural narrative commemorating – not celebrating – what was gained and what was lost.

More than 30 Wampanoag Indians have become collaborators in the project known as Mayflower 400. They have created art exhibitions and demonstrations. They are teaching classes in both England and America about their culture, customs, and history. With their English counterparts at The Box Theatre in Plymouth, England, they have written a historical drama and prepared to take their parts in it. Covid has prevented this collaboration from coming to fruition, but in time both Indians and Whites will tell their story together. Meanwhile, they have generated a lot of material online. The Wampanoag, at last, are being heard.

Let's listen to a few words from the speech Frank Wamsutta James was forbidden to give 50 years ago, but which he gave anyway before the regal statue of Massasoit.

“High on a hill, overlooking the famed Plymouth Rock, stands (this) statue of our great Sachem, Massasoit. Massasoit has stood 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…

“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 (and woman). 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. (The Indian), too, is often misunderstood….

“What has happened cannot be changed, but today we must work towards a more humane America, a more Indian America, where men, (women) and nature once again are important; where the Indian values of honor, truth, and brotherhood prevail. You (who are White) are celebrating an anniversary. We the Wampanoags will help you celebrate the concept of a beginning. It was the beginning of a new life for the Pilgrims. Now, 350 years later, it is the beginning of a new determination for the original American: the American Indian.”

Frank James would be pleased to know that during this 400th anniversary year, 2020, the living museum, previously known as Plimoth Plantation for 73 years, has a new name. From henceforth it will be called Plimoth-Patuxet.

He would be glad to know that Minneapolis changed the name of its largest lake from Lake Calhoun to its original name, Bde Maka Ska.

He would be glad to know that six Native Americans will serve in the next US Congress. Many barriers are falling.

We have a long, long way to go. Yet we must dream. Someday, perhaps, Plymouth Church’s original embroidery can be resurrected – not as a distorted vision of the past, but as a dream of what may yet be. But not yet.

May this Covided year be for us the beginning of the end of very old assumptions of white supremacy. May 2020 be the beginning of a new way of listening, celebrating and inclusion. May we all find a place at the table together.