Wampanoag (and Plimoth Patuxet) #AtoZChallenge

If you are looking for my Skywatch Friday post, please click here.

In July of 2023, my spouse and I visited the Plimoth-Pautuxet Museums in modern day Plymouth, Massachusetts.

It's educational, to put it mildly.  In school, I learned that the Pilgrims landed there in 1620 on a ship called the Mayflower.  And there was a Thanksgiving feast where the local "Indians" and the Pilgrims feasted as friends. 

Well, not exactly....

We learned that where the Pilgrims settled had been an Indigenous Wampanoag settlement called Patuxet.  "Was", because white men had visited there before and, sadly, brought diseases such as smallpox and a blood disease with them.  In fact, these Indigenous people had first contact with Europeans some 70 years before 1620, we were told.

 It is estimated that around 90% of the Wampanoag died from disease between 1614 and 1620 in two outbreaks.  Almost all of the Patuxet band of the Wampanoag died and the village was deserted when the Pilgrims landed.  What happened next is a hard and sad story to absorb.

What had been the Patuxet village and cornfields were taken over by the European settlers. 

Reconstructed Plimoth Village, Plimoth Patuxet Museums

However, it was true that they wouldn't have survived their first winter without the assistance of those Indigenous peoples who had survived the two outbreaks of disease, and attempts by Europeans to capture them and sell them into slavery.  

Tisquantum, who was incorrectly named Squanto in the textbooks of my youth, survived to assist the Pilgrims only because he had been captured in 1614 by an English explorer who sold him to the Spanish.  He was enslaved until Franciscan monks bought his freedom. During his time in Europe, he learned the English language. As a result, he missed the epidemics of 1616 and 1618. He  returned home to find his village gone, the residents dead.

Tragically, Tisquantum died from disease in 1622.

Not only that but when I tried to write his name in an email, Autocorrect changed it to "mosquito".

As for 1621 and the first Thanksgiving, here is a perspective different from what we were taught in school.

Recreated Indigenous garden

At the time the Europeans first came, it is estimated about 40,000 Wampanoag lived in as many as 67 villages through Massachusetts and eastern Rhode Island.  Perhaps 5000 (enrolled members of two Federally recognized tribes) remain.  It was hard to research an exact number.

The Plimoth Patuxet museums, a living history complex that includes the replica Mayflower II ship, continues its educational mission as living history museums.  

"W" day in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.  My theme:  history, gardens, art and the unexpected.