Alexandersmap

    Tag: Pokanoket

    • Following the Rhode Island to Bermuda Thread

      We stayed on St. David’s Island this week while we were in Bermuda. It wasn’t a conscious choice to stay there, but I’m pleased we did, for otherwise I don’t believe we would have gotten there on this particular trip. When I speak of conscious choices, I want to acknowledge that unconsciously I knew the connection between New England and Bermuda. In particular, between Rhode Island and St. David’s Island. Not simply the famous sailing race, but the historic slave trade. Bermuda was the destination for many of those “problematic” Native Americans who were being crowded out by waves of settlers changing the landscape of North America.

      One generation after the Pilgrims were saved in their first brutal winter in Plymouth, their saviors’ offspring were fighting for survival in what became known as King Philip’s War (1675-1676). King Philip was the English name for Metacomet, Chief of the Pokanoket, who’s seat was in Mount Hope, Rhode Island. The direct descendants of the Pokanoket are the Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe. When Metacomet was eventually tracked down and killed, ending the war, his wife Wootonekanuske and their son were sold into slavery in Bermuda, meeting the fate of many other Native Americans. Mother and son were separated on the island and lived out their lives as slaves. The son was said to have been on St. David’s Island.

      What seems completely separate is often connected in ways we don’t always understand. Our histories all blend together at some point, sometimes generations later. The story of humanity is tumultuous, tragic and beautiful all intertwined as a tapestry. One thread leads to the next, and we are one. We are forever learning, forgetting and relearning those connections. In a place called St. David’s Island, or in Bristol, Rhode Island, we find those threads and are reminded that our stories will forever be one and the same, even as our outcomes diverge.

      Smith Island, as seen from St. David’s Island, looks a lot like Bermuda in its earliest days might have looked. An active archeological dig is uncovering English settlement in this part of the island.
      The rugged point of St. David’s Island near Fort Hill Bay, with Nonsuch Island seen to the left

    • The Pilgrims and Pokanoket

      As you walk into the Mayflower Pub in London there’s a poster mounted high on the wall that shows the silhouettes of all the pilgrims and servants who sailed on the Mayflower to settle in America. The poster is divided in two, with the upper half showing the Pilgrims as they sailed from Europe. The lower half has the same image, but depicts those who perished before that first winter was over in gray. There’s a lot of gray… but by all rights it should have been all of them.

      The Pilgrims sailed for America too late in the season, without enough food, and sailed for the wrong place. Their charter had them settling at the mouth of the Hudson River, and instead they found themselves at the fist of Cape Cod. Turning south they almost wrecked on the treacherous shoals that have claimed thousands of ships since then. Turning back northward, the Captain of the Mayflower considered present-day Provincetown but eventually worked their way to the area that would become Plymouth., Massachusetts. Pilgrims were starting to die as freezing temperatures, tough living conditions aboard and malnutrition conspired against them. The Native American tribes were well aware of their presence and had already skirmished with them on Cape Cod at First Encounter Beach. A more sustained attack could easily have wiped them out.

      But the Pilgrims also had some lucky breaks that kept enough of them alive to establish a foothold in the region. They arrived at a place where just a few years earlier thousands of Native Americans lived. Contact with Europeans, most likely fishermen fishing the Gulf of Maine, triggered a plaque that killed thousands of people in the few years right before the Pilgrims arrived. So the native population was decimated and in no position to shove the Pilgrims back into the ocean they’d arrived on. They settled in an area with cleared fields and few adversaries. Truly fortunate to be there instead of landing in a place with a thriving and hostile Native American population.

      The other lucky break the Pilgrims caught was landing at a place where the local Sachem, Massasoit, saw strategic advantage in an alliance with the Pilgrims. The Pokanoket tribe Massasoit was Sachem of had been hit hard by the plaque that hit the tribes along the Gulf of Maine, and he was feeling pressure from the Narraganset tribe. An alliance with the Pilgrims gave him some strength in numbers that proved mutually beneficial for the short term. Ultimately this alliance would give the Pilgrims the momentum to survive and grow, but would destroy the Pokanoket in the next generation. An accident of geography brought the Pilgrims and Pokanoket together, time would drive them apart. But in the winter of 1620-1621, it would prove the difference in keeping more Pilgrims from turning into gray silhouettes on a poster 400 years later.

    • Friday the 13th and Ghost Stories

      Here we are again, at a point where the days and numbers on the calendar align and give us another Friday the 13th.  In general good things have come my way on a day many people associate with bad luck.  My son was born on a Friday the 13th, making it a very lucky day indeed.  More often than not you get what you expect in life, and if you’re primed to look for the negative it’ll find you.  I’ll stick with the opposite point of view, thank you.  Optimism with a healthy dose of stoicism seems to work for me.

      I’ve written before about dancing with ghosts.  For me ghosts aren’t the creepy spirits that get annoyed that you’re in their space, they’re the people who lived in the past who’s story is all around us.  Historical figures and anonymous lives alike, all lived before we were here.  The stone wall standing alone in the woods, the old foundation on Isle of Skye left from the Clearances, the soot on the ceiling of a cave from fires long ago, and the groove worn into a stair tread; These are my ghosts. I love uncovering the stories of some person from centuries ago and visiting the place they did something memorable, and maybe their grave to remind them they aren’t forgotten.  We all want to be remembered, don’t we?  At least for a few generations.  Make the ripple last as long as possible, hopefully in a positive way.

      I’ve been bumping into the other kind of ghost stories lately.  People who encounter poltergeists.  A poltergeist wants attention, making its presence known by messing with things in “our” world, crossing some border between death and life.  Frankly I never think about the poltergeist kind of ghost.  Maybe I’m closed-minded about it, or maybe they see me dancing with other ghosts and leave me alone.  But I’ve got this stack of stories people tell me about poltergeists they’ve encountered, and after a while you have to wonder what’s real and what’s imagined.  I see good things on Friday the 13th, others see bad things; who’s right?

      Yesterday I was speaking with a Town Clerk in Connecticut.  I’d stopped to pick up a death certificate for an ancestor as a favor for my mother.  We noticed on the death certificate that this relative had died from a fall down the stairs, breaking his neck.  I joked about that house being haunted and the clerk, not missing a beat, told me about Antonio, pointing to the vault and saying he died right in there and still haunts the place. I looked in the vault and asked if he preferred Antonio or Tony.  We finished our transaction and I was on my way, with one more ghost story added to the list. I don’t know if Antonio is a poltergeist haunting the vault at Town Hall, but I do know that he tragically died in the vault at some point in history.  And people are still talking about him to this day.

      I’ve heard similar stories from separate friends about encounters at hotels in Boston and Nashville, and some good friends that insist there’s a ghost in a family home on Cape Cod.  What do I know?  I’m not in the poltergeist business.  I have no desire to stay in Lizzy Borden’s house for a night trying to bait unseen ghosts to come out and play.  No, I’m trying to bring their stories alive without all the mischief.  But now and then I do hear a whisper in the wind, feel a spirit in the air, and I give a nod to acknowledge.  Walking alone in the woods at Holy Hill in Harvard, Massachusetts in Autumn once had me thinking of Shaker ghosts.  Visiting King Philip’s Seat in Bristol, Rhode Island and spooking a hawk into flight had me hearing whispers of Metacom and the lost Pokanoket tribe as I explored the woods.  And visiting the Winter Street graveyard in Exeter, New Hampshire looking for the grave of Major General Nathaniel Folsom felt like I was being directed around to look at every other Revolutionary War hero’s grave before finding his.  I felt it that day too.

      So here we are on another Friday the 13th.  We generally get what we look for in life, and I hope today brings you good fortune.  If you happen to run into any ghosts, I hope they aren’t poltergeists – those buggers are nothing but mischief.