Mashpee Indian Whalers
On exhibit at The Commons in the Urvashi Vaid & Kate Clinton Community Room
This story has many facets to it that involved Mashpee Indians engaged in the whaling industry both by choice and by force. The time period spanned nearly one hundred years. Most of the heavy whaling harvest took place during the mid-19th century. Before Europeans arrived in the region, the Wampanoag people hunted whales when the whales came to feed in North Atlantic Ocean. There were occasions that a whale would drift ashore and then be divided among the people by the Sachem closest to the beached animal. Wampanoag Sachem rights to drift whales still exist on the law books today and have been used as recently as 1998.
The exhibit was developed by Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Member Ramona Peters and was funded in part through the U.S. Dept. of Education/Office of Indian Education ARP-AIRE Grant
In Thanksgiving's wake, navigating around the myth ...
... toward a fascinating facet of Mashpee history that happens to be true
SETH ROLBEIN
NOV 24, 2023
Much as I love being with family on Thanksgiving, chucking a pigskin and chasing young’uns before devouring turkey, the holiday has become increasingly problematic for me, a contradiction harder to balance. I sense this is true for growing numbers who question the absurd myth, and acknowledge more of the true, tragic history.
I have stood in Plymouth on Thanksgiving morning, among people for whom “mourning” was the appropriate spelling. As time passes, their perspectives sink deeper into me. So this isn’t some “politically correct” rap, it’s an attempt to be more honest. That doesn’t diminish gratitude, but it does temper privilege with understanding that our holiday came at great cost, and as a nation we buried that truth.
Being on Cape Cod only adds to the bittersweet. Those who were here as the Mayflower arrived still survive; it was Wampanoag corn stolen, land taken, promises to them broken, and there’s nothing “woke” (in the deprecating way that word is invoked) about facing that.
Looking to pivot, found a way:
“Mashpee Indian Whalers” is a traveling exhibit installed at the Salt Pond Visitor Center of the Cape Cod National Seashore on Route 6 in Eastham, created by tribal members, multiple panels mounted on wood frames in the lobby. Revealed is one of many facets of Mashpee history few people understand; “the tribe’s major presence in the 19th century whaling industry.”
For centuries, Mashpees hunted “P8tâpâak” — “whales” in Wampanoag — close to shore in small light boats and "mishoons" (canoes). As world-wide whaling developed, with Nantucket Quakers playing a leading role, it made sense that Mashpee men, much at home on the water, were recruited and became deeply engaged.
“By 1860, 51 men, 46% of adult males in the tribe, were involved in the whaling industry,” the exhibit notes. Dozens more participated before and after, and many family names remain familiar: Amos, Attaquin, Coombs, Hendricks, Mills, Pocknett, Peters.
A global map, pocked with blue dots from Pacific to Atlantic, Baffins Bay to Indian Ocean, documents locations where a Mashpee whaler arrived. There were many successful voyages but also wrecks, death, desertions, pirate captures, even mutinies. This explains why there are Mashpee Wampanoag descendants in far-flung places like Hawaii and New Zealand.
Stern portraits conjure serious personalities. And these men, traversing the globe, witnessing so much, played a crucial role in re-shaping life in Mashpee:
“(T)hese Indian whalers planned, wrote, and executed the 1834 legislation to obtain self-government for their families back home. The Mashpee Indian District provided independence for the tribal citizens to establish businesses, pass laws that governed fairly, and offered a means for tribal people to contribute to their own government.”
Those rights and opportunities would be challenged (and undermined) over and over in years to come; like Black servicemen back from war, these whalers returned to discrimination that their experiences and bravery should have eliminated.
Resurrecting their history doesn’t accomplish that, but it is a compelling way to expand on the idea of Thanksgiving; the exhibit is up at the Seashore’s visitors center through December 3, possibly longer, before traveling on.