Wampsutta -Wampanoag-November 1970
I speak to you as a man — a Wampanoag Man. I am a proud man, proud of my ancestry, my accomplishments won by a strict parental direction (“You must succeed – your face is a different color in this small Cape Cod community!”). I am a product of poverty and discrimination from these two social and economic diseases. I, and my brothers and sisters, have painfully overcome, and to some extent we have earned the respect of our community. We are Indians first – but we are termed “good citizens.” Sometimes we are arrogant but only because society has pressured us to be so.
It is with mixed emotion that I stand here to share my thoughts. This is a time of celebration for you – celebrating an anniversary of a beginning for the white man in America. A time of looking back, of reflection. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People.
I don’t have much to say in this diary. There really isn’t anything that could be said that could add to the words of the man quoted above, or the truth below.
From an old article at the Black Commentator
William Bradford, the former Governor of Plymouth and one of the chroniclers of the 1621 feast, was also on hand for the great massacre of 1637:
“Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire…horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.”
The rest of the white folks thought so, too. “This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots,” read Governor John Winthrop’s proclamation. The authentic Thanksgiving Day was born.
I’m thankful that I know the truth. I’m thankful that I can teach my children the truth. The truth to counter the filthy lies that they’re taught in school. The truth of their heritage, white and indigenous.
But most of all, I’m thankful and proud that I have ancestors with real American names…
Wampanoag
Narragansett
Massachusett
Shinnecock
Poospatuck
Pequot
Mohegan
Mohawk
Pennacook
Pawtucket
Seneca
Onandaga
Cherokee
Arikara
Lakota
Osage
Cheyenne
Tequesta
……
……
……
…………….
I have relatives that are Indian, I married a man who was 1/16th Indian, but I have nothing but speculation about my own Indian ancestry. But I do know that the history of the treatment of the natives of this land is miserable and terrible. Nothing but dishonor in the manner in which they have dealt with their relationship with the natives has been accrued by the white leadership. Dishonor, greed – all the evils that man can devise – has been the hallmark of the leadership of this nation. We can see that clearly in the Iraq war, the torture, the war-profiteering and the general insanity. We are, as a nation, profoundly bankrupt in our ability to rise above our own base natures.
Yes, exactly. Little has changed in the 400 years since that particular myth was manufactured.
Peace
after staying up with the baby to help mama. What myth?
They are many…all our brothers and sisters…we owe them a debt that we will never be able to repay.
Peace and blessings
Wow…thanks for that great link dada!
Thank you Dada,
I would’ve liked to list every tribal name, but I would’ve been listing all night.
Any debt that is owed can be partially paid by remembering them and by seeing that our kids understand what has really happened. It’s getting better, but it’s still a lie slanted toward massaging our image as peaceful people.
Peace to you
The link you provided is absolutely fantastic. I`ve been going through the photo archives through the link, & the faces on all the images I`ve looked at, so far, [over a hundred] personify “Truth”. I noted also that upon opening the link, there are 106 tribes mentioned. Upon further review I noticed that this did not cover many geographical areas on the map, leading to the conclusion that there are many, many more on the next pages.
Now I consider myself quite “well read”, but I would never have guessed
that that many different & overlapping cultures & societies existed here before the white hordes arrived to eradicate, oops I meant educate them.
The “veil from tears” has been opened a little more for me.
Another thing that struck me, was that none of the images, with a few exceptions involving children, portrayed these people with a smile, but everyone of the subjects exuded a subtle pride or oneness or specialnees. It`s hard to describe.
My special regards to Supersoling for showing us the truth, to dada for the link to it & to all the subjects in the links or their surviving tribal people.
here’s another site with a very nice compilation of a lot of old portraits the you might also enjoy
LINK
I have little right to claim part of my blood. I have every right to claim part of my blood, my mother’s blood. I have little right to divide myself. I am as much my father’s son as my mother’s, and his ancestry isn’t much different from the ancestry of those who came to the Dakotas as missionaries and opportunistic traders or school teachers or ranchers … taking Lakota wives. I am, like most Americans, a child of exploitation and love, lies and connection, despair and hope. I clung to stories of of my “red” blood because the history of my “white” blood felt shameful to me. I am exploitation and tradition. Love and hate. Racism and welcoming.
I am American.
On Thanksgiving, I am both thankful and torn. Hopeful and despairing. Optimistic and hopeless. Hated and hating.
I am American, a curse and a blessing, a living contradiction, a history written upon forgetting, grand words and shameful actions.
I am blessed for two parents who pushed me to read, who pushed me to question, who pushed me to know. That is an American trait, no matter how often most Americans try to deny it.
Madman, thanks for this – so beautifully written.
It reminds me of the writing by Alice Walker that is similar. In her book “Living by the Word” she writes about her critics who didn’t like that the character Mister in “The Color Purple” was an abusive black man. She points out that both in the book and movie Mister’s father was obviously the son of a white slave owner and black slave. Here is the quote that sums it all up:
We are the African and the trader. We are the Indian and the settler. We are the slaver and the enslaved. We are the oppressor and the oppressed. We are the women and the men. We are the children. The ancestors, black and white, who suffered during slavery – and I’ve come to believe they all did; you need only check your own soul to imagine how – grieve, I believe, when a black man oppresses women, and when a black woman or man mistreats a child. They paid those dues. Surely they bought our gentleness toward each other with their pain.
oh, thank you for that … I hadn’t seen it before.
You’ve just expressed how I’ve felt most of my life. I am as much Irish and Italian as I am Cherokee. But I can’t claim much pride as an American. I can love and respect the legacy they left as people, but I am ashamed of the deeds of the whole. I think that I could better move beyond that shame if we were making progress as our history advances, but we have not. Deep down we are still a brutal culture. Full of ourselves and righteous in our destruction and subjugation of others.
Very very nice. It`s good to read something from someone who understands who he is.
I don’t know if I ever thought of Thanksgiving as “celebrating an anniversary of a beginning for the white man in America.” For me, it has always been a time for family to gather. “O’er the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go…” was the theme song that played in my head.
As each holiday has gotten more and more commercial with blow-up creatures decorating yards and lights and gew gaws, I find myself struggling to find what was and is personally meaningful. If Hallmark has a card for it, I don’t want to participate.
On the other hand, in a culture that has raised complaining and unhappiness to an art form, a day to practice paying attention and being thankful seems a good thing.
If I think about Thanksgiving as a national holiday, there is something very valuable, and that is one group of people helping another group of people to survive:
When I consider all the commemorations of battles and wars, collecting all the moments when people helped other people and celebrating them – is that not important to learn too?
As to what happened after the first Thanksgiving, I do know in the local school the fifth graders do a unit on Native Indians. And I have seen the display of what they have learned and that now includes things like blankets with little placards explaining how plague was passed along to the native people on purpose. Not something I was taught in elementary school.
And there are wonderful children’s books now that bring in the facts. Russell Freedman’s Buffalo Hunt includes paintings by George Caitlin and others showing how the buffalo was the center of a whole culture. It includes paintings of buffalo shot by “gentleman hunters” shooting from trains, not even pausing to do anything with the dead animals and discusses what happened as a result to the people dependent on the buffalo. So the word is getting out to the young.
Thanksgiving is a good time to keep reminding us of our cultural myths – that a moment can be viewed from different perspectives – that beliefs and their attendant actions have consequences and effects that travel from the past to the present – that real people in the here and now struggle and suffer from choices made by those long gone. And, of course, a very personal question can be raised: Knowing what I know now, what will I do with this knowledge?
Thanks for the reminder.
Since I’ve had my own family, it’s the family that is the focus of the giving of thanks. It wasn’t always that way when I was a kid. Even though my own original family was somewhat enlighted about history and myth, there was still an adherance to tradition. I even played Miles Standish in a play as a child, along with all the lies.
I too get disturbed at the increasing commercial pushing of these holidays. X-mas reminders in October. Black Friday…get out and shop! Show her how much you care…buy her a diamond. I had a nice long talk with my Sarah last night about all of this. What is important and what isn’t. I’m eternally thankful for those moments spent exchanging ideas and passing down beliefs. She knew very little about the true history of Thanksgiving, even now. Now she knows :o)
The version of the first Thanksgiving that is blockquoted in your comment was very unlikely. Massasoit was likely *un*invited.
Take care Tampopo
Brought me to tears. Just lovely, and so sad.
Thank you Lisa,
now dry your eyes please :o)
I am grateful for the small portion of Native blood I carry, and most grateful to have begin my recovery amidst my Native American sisters and brothers. From them I learned a new kind of “blessing” at mealtime, that I dearly love. At each meal, pause and take a tiny bit of each food on my plate, and set it aside in a small dish. Then afterward, take that tiny portion outside and offer it back to Mother Earth, with gratitude to her,the plant people and the animals for their sustenance.
Tomorrow I will also offer tobacco, in sorrow for thier suffering, and in sage smoke I will send hope that we will someday remember what they always knew.
Thank you for this diary, super. You have such a beautiful heart.
How I wish I could be with you when you make your offerings scribe. But in the physical absense I’ll keep my mind tuned for signs of it :o) Geography is no barrier to energy :o)
Peace
At least not on the given Thursday that we are told to do so.
It is just another day to me.
As are Christmas, Easter, the Fourth of July, etc.
For only one reason.
Do not tell ME when to be happy.
Or thankful or joyous or sad any other goddamned thing. I am perfectly capable of being those things and a thousand thousand more any day that they are proper to the circumstances.
As are you all.
“Holidays” are just part of the control mechanism.
Once they have control of your emotions…GOTCHA!!!
Bet on it.
From “The Mayan Caper”-William S. Burroughs, 1961
We LIVE in a control mechanism. It rolls along like a great Bach fugue, and we tumble along inside of it.
Refuse.
As much as is humanly possible.
You be bettah off.
This does not mean that you must isolate yourself from your family and friends. Living inside of this mechanism, we are ALL affected by it. The mere idea of “the day off” is enough to ensure that. But do not buy INTO it.
Have a nice day.
I will.
EVERY goddamned day.
Bet on it.
AG
AG,
I’ll just say this, I’m with you 100%.
You have a nice day your own self.
Peace
I wil, thank youl.
i have already.
Up at 5 AM, worked on my latest book (music) back to sleep at 9 AM, up 1 PM, made some calls, gonna practice, dinner with some friends (My “family” is many other places, today. MANY other places.), home, write some music and/or work some more on the book, mind gives up whenever, back to sleep, up at 5 AM or so, do it all over again.
My own favorite holiday?
Groundhog Day.
But only if you understand the principle of variation within repetition.
Taught to me by the prophet Charlie Parker, among many others. (There really are only 12 notes. Sorta kinda.)
Have fun…
AG
Forgive the typos, por favor.
Human is this turkey’s second language.
Especially typed Human.
AG
Newly arrived in the Southwest, the whole European/ Indian cultural strife is all around. Santa Fe is surrounded by reservations, “sovereign nations” “granted” to the Indians by the U.S. occupiers. Indian ruins are preserved, Indian art is supported, Indian casinos are well-attended, but there is not true economic or social equality.
The “Spanish” residents — direct descendants from the Conquistadors — are the aristocracy. The “Anglos” come next on the pecking order. (It seems odd to me to be called that, having absolutely no Anglo-Saxon hertiage.) The Indians and the Mexicans are at the bottom of the social structure — and never, never, confuse Mexican with the Hispanics. Blacks and Asians are virutally non-existant.
There is great pride in the history of the Conquistadors, which, I admit, makes me cringe. There is even a version or Our Lady called La Conquistadora. There is a festival in the fall where members of Spanish background vie to play the role of historical figures. Included, at some late point, was the “opportunity” for a Native to play the ” Indian Princess” and native dances have been included.
It is all very colorful for a whitewashed version of history.
Tribes fought and destroyed each other. The Spanish were brutal occupiers.
Humankind always needs to describe people as “other” in order to steal, murder, destroy. We have to ingnore our commonality.
What if the spirit of community as portrayed in the Hallmark version of Thanksgiving had prevailed? What if the community grew larger and larger and more inclusive. Is there ever a chance that such a thing could happen?
Good morning Kahli,
I don’t know if our coming together as a true community is possible. I have my doubts. This small gathering here though, gives a sliver of hope. As long as power and prestige is the reward for stripping others of their rights, resources, and wealth, I think not much will change. Maybe as the country and the planet become more and more crowded we’ll be forced to consider one another more carefully and respectfully…or…the competition for space and resources will drive more brutal competion and wars. Even in that environment there are small islands of sanity. They exist around your table and mine. In the end that’s all that we can be sure of.
Peace
My Great Grandfather was half and he was named Grover Cleveland. Named after a famous white person like many Cherokee children of his time. My daughter is also 1/16 native American as her father is a 1/16 Morning Star Cheyenne. Adapt to survive I suppose. If you’re lucky a white settler will need a wife where women are so hard to come by, and so it was. There is a self reliance in me that will never die until I do and I probably get that from them. My Great Grandfather was very successful as he was a “pretty Indian” and he married a German immigrant who he spotted on a wagon with her family and declared that he would one day marry her. She had that full out German temper, I wonder if he ever regretted that š
Thank you Tracy,
Years ago I researched how much Cherokee “blood” I had and what was required to be legally considered a member. I’m 1/8th, legally. But my sense of belonging comes not from blood quotients. It comes from heart quotients. From belief quotients. I don’t even know my first nations family names beyond my grandmother Barbara. She was adopted as a child after her father, a white, was murdered in Oklahoma. Her mother was a full Cherokee descended from eastern Cherokee who were forced to Oklahoma in the 1830’s.
I’m proud that my grandmother Mary was from Ballina, County Mayo, and my grandfather Silvio was from Milan. But I’m not proud of Irish or Italian history in this country. It’s a funky place to inhabit.
Peace
A funky place indeed, super — birthed in blood, sustained in blood. As individuals we realize where we are, as we are & why.
Therefore: we nurture in ourselves what is sane, compassionate, peaceful & wise; recognize & transform or abandon the rest.
May the gratitude for these possibilities touch us all today.
smidge of Native American if they come from families that settled the area. Some people adapted and some people could not, some people still cannot and they struggle to attempt to live their lives on the reservations. They struggle with alcoholism horribly genetically predispositioned to it, never exposed to it until the white settlers brought it here. My grandmother was always ashamed of her heritage. Her own grandmother she condemned and said that she looked a damn squaw, I guess because the woman wasn’t very interested in acting white. Sometimes when I was teenager and I was feeling evil about my grandmother’s different harshnesses I would ponder telling her that when she spent too much time outside in the yard she looked like a squaw with makeup on but I didn’t…..whew! I plan on watching the real story of the Mayflower today on the History Channel. I know this dude who has an ancestor who came over on the Mayflower. His ancestor fell off the damn thing and they fished him back on. Can you imagine ;)? I will never be able to have any lasting fight with you Super. I should have known you were Cherokee in there some place. It’s strange but I have never been able to have a real disagreement with anybody who has my Native clan’s DNA. It’s odd but it’s like we recognize each other somehow too before we know.
I have this habit od trying to get along with everyone who crosses my path. It might sound like a good quality, but sometimes it can circle around and bite you in the hindparts. Wanna see the scars? :o) The thing is, the important thing to me anyway, is that there is much more that we have in common than not. Though outwarsly it might not look that way. Respect is earned in my eyes and you’ve earned it many times over. I can disagree with on lots of things. Even come to slinging curses, as we have. But the underlying truth is that if i didn’t give a shit I would’nt watse my time. The ones we care about and respect the most are the ones we fight most passionately with.
I’m glad that dude in your past got fished back onto the boat ;o)
I also have a habit of losing my ability to spell properly after the Corona’s kick in :o)
she has no Indian in her at all……..her chances are slim with me! I lost it without the benefit of any substance….I think we’re screwed.
Okay, damn it, you caused the tears to flow for me too. Surprising as it is. I have often thought there are no more tears left in me for this shameful memory of what was done to the Indians. Wrong again.
It was said by the adoption agency that handled our adoption that we had a great, great grandfather who was full blooded American Indian. Everyone, including me has taken them at their word. Apache, Shoshone, Bannock, Lakota, Nez perce, are just some of the speculation about such ansestry. It would be lovely to know, but I don’t. It is quite easy to claim them all. But what I know in a deep inner place is that I am also Black, and Asian, and Arabic and every other configuration of tribal identity there is. Most likely not in the literal physical DNA sense of it. . .yet if we trace our DNA back to the beginnings we find that wonderful Black mother of us all.
I am not too fond of identifying myself with human beings in general these days. . .I’ll take my star ancestry most happily over all the rest.
The history of humans on this planet has been one bloody, vile assault by one group on another since the beginning of our remembered time. At times it seems my soul is soaked in the blood of these actions. At times my sorrow fills me with more weariness and emptiness than I can carry. For all our amazing accomplishments in science, in art, in music, in architecture, in medicine, in technology. . .what have we learned? Certainly we have not learned how to get along with each other. Certainly we have not learned the desolation of war. Certainly we have not learned that we have no right to take another’s life. Certainly we have not learned that love is the answer to all questions and all actions. Certainly we have not learned.
I participate in Thanksgiving many times throughout the year and it has very little to do with the Pilgrim-Indian mythology. Here on this beautiful, abundant, and extraordinary planet we have blessings poured out without measure upon us. It is unconscionable not to recognize it and appreciate it every day, even make special one or more days to celebrate it. And so I do. None of the other days we call holidays have any significance to me, never have, but days of thanksgiving have always filled me with gratitude and a hope that the promise of humans moving beyond their stunted growth and stepping forward into love for each other will come to pass one day.
I still hope. I am ever thankful,
Hugs and Loves,
Shirl
I’m not too fond of identifying with humans either. They’re cramping my style :o) But you go through life with the DNA you’re given, not the DNA you might like to have. But as you say, deep in that DNA is the black African mother in all of us. Someday we might recognize all our relations as from a common ancestor…family, and treat each other as such. In the mean time we seek out brothers and sisters of the heart. A search that for me has brought me many gifts, none more precious than you, Shirl of the Stars :o)
With Love….
William Buroughs Thanksgiving Prayer
http://www.teambio.org/2006/11/william-burroughs-thanksgiving-prayer/
I’m back in the stone age with dial up, so I couldn’t watch the video. I did find a transcript though:
We never did evolve much from our original Puritanical values, did we?
I`m glad you put it in print form. I did have to watch it twice after trying to get it all on the first trip. The video is also pretty powerful with him stating his “Thanks”, with images of his subject matter seen faintly fading in & disolving into the next “Thanks”.
You`re right, I see those unevolved Puritanical values more & more, & I
probably should have used “devolved”, especially since the technology today, shouldn`t allow for ignorance nor naivete.
To paraphrase T. S. Eliot and Joseph Conrad:
“Mr. Burroughs, he bad.”
VERY bad.
AD
Thanks Super. I believe that I am 3/64’s Native American, that being 1/32 Choctaw and 1/64 Cherokee. I’m also French, Irish, English, Scottish, and German, and probably a few others. These roots my family own up to. I think I’m probably 1/64 African, too, but I’ve never had anyone in the family own up to it. There are some suggestive records, but it was so long ago it may or may not be true. Regardless of my more recent ancestors, I feel the pull of my darker roots, whether they be 4, 5 , or more generations back…
There is little if anything to add to the stream of comments that precede mine, so I won’t try to add, just acknowledge and embrace. Thanks again.
Taking a generation as 20 years…which within human memory was just about the median human reproductive age and is probably not really accurate over the long term of human history (More like 15 in most tribal cultures like the Amazonian rain forest, the old South Bronx and Appalachia, a figure which would skew my results below even further out to lunch.)…if you go back only four centuries (A drop in the ol’ time bucket as far as human history is concerned)…you have 65,536 different ancestors. (Barring of course the occasional regrettable foray into serious incest.)
Yup.
Do the math.
Another four centuries? Still more than 1000 years after the popularly accepted birthdate of Christ?
4,294,967,296.
YIKES!!!
20 years further back?
Well over the current total population of the planet.
How about THAT Thanksgiving get-together!!!???
A mere two centuries further back? 1000 AD? At which point they were already making wine in France and the Chinese were busily inventing gunpowder and thus setting events in motion that would culminate in nasty activities things like the war in Iraq and John Wayne movies?
1,099,511,627,776. (That’s 1.1 trillion, brethren and sistren.)
Then back to 1 AD?
Into the SEPTILLIONS!!!
Oh MY!!!
And we have only scratched the SURFACE of human evolution.
Yet here we are, talking of being 1/16th some tribe or race or culture.
The ONLY thing that we are is 100% human. (Whatever THAT means.)
And 100% related.
How so?
Because on the best estimates of total human population starting from 50,000 BC, there have only been 106.5 billion people EVER born here!!!
UH oh!!!
Each of us has 50 thousand times more ancestors than there have ever been humans.
Musta been a WHOLE lotta sharin’ goin’ on.
All of those genes?
We’ve ALL got them.
So barring relatively short term cultural differences…AIN’T no “Cherokee” or “Chinese” blood.
Just us chickens here, all cooped up in the planetary henhouse and fornicating like mad.
Have fun…
“Cuz we are ALL one.
Bet on it.
Happy whatever…
AG
But when it comes to the personal dynamic of dealing with prejudice, racism, being however judgmental about a person’s genes, it is vastly beneficial in having roots in this great nation where you can trace your own lineage back to fainting spells for a few members.
I suppose.
Just sayin’…
There’s MORE.
AG
dynamic affects my family. Some of my cousins are also related to Andrew Jackson. When they get together they tend to feed on this little tidbit until I gleefully say, “Well, don’t forget about the Ki-Yi (pronounced K-eye eye).” I’m sort of deflating in a realistic fashion. P.S. Don’t use the “K” word unless you’re Ki-Yi yourself. It’s like the “N” word.
Now a stand-alone post.
The “Truth”? Happy Whatever. Happy WHOever.
Comment there, if you so desire.
Or here.
Whatever.
WHOMever.
Later…
AG
Kind of makes the turkey stick in your throat a bit. Well–here’s to truth, Super. And good day to you, man.
And to you as well