Massasoit, Chief of the Wampanoag tribe from 1620 to 1661, was one of the most powerful native rulers of New England. He was instrumental in the survival of the early settlers at Plymouth. His faithful adherence to a treaty he signed with the pilgrims in 1621 allowed the two groups to enjoy a peaceful coexistence. History will show that these acts of kindness, however, are the beginning of the end of the Indian culture. Alvin Weeks, past Great Sachem of the Improved Order of Red Men of Massachusetts, wrote Massasoit of the Wampanoags. Weeks includes a brief commentary and sketches of other great chiefs, tribes and nations, including Samoset, Squanto and Hobamock.
Ahead of the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving, a new look at the Plymouth colony's founding events, told for the first time with Wampanoag people at the heart of the story. In March 1621, when Plymouth's survival was hanging in the balance, the Wampanoag sachem (or chief), Ousamequin (Massasoit), and Plymouth's governor, John Carver, declared their people's friendship for each other and a commitment to mutual defense. Later that autumn, the English gathered their first successful harvest and lifted the specter of starvation. Ousamequin and 90 of his men then visited Plymouth for the “First Thanksgiving.” The treaty remained operative until King Philip's War in 1675, when 50 years of uneasy peace between the two parties would come to an end. 400 years after that famous meal, historian David J. Silverman sheds profound new light on the events that led to the creation, and bloody dissolution, of this alliance. Focusing on the Wampanoag Indians, Silverman deepens the narrative to consider tensions that developed well before 1620 and lasted long after the devastating war-tracing the Wampanoags' ongoing struggle for self-determination up to this very day. This unsettling history reveals why some modern Native people hold a Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving, a holiday which celebrates a myth of colonialism and white proprietorship of the United States. This Land is Their Land shows that it is time to rethink how we, as a pluralistic nation, tell the history of Thanksgiving.
One of America's earliest books and one of the most important early Pilgrim tracts to come from American colonies. This book helped persuade others to come join those who already came to Plymouth.
"Vivid and remarkably fresh...Philbrick has recast the Pilgrims for the ages."--The New York Times Book Review Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History New York Times Book Review Top Ten books of the Year With a new preface marking the 400th anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower. How did America begin? That simple question launches the acclaimed author of In the Hurricane's Eye and Valiant Ambition on an extraordinary journey to understand the truth behind our most sacred national myth: the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony. As Philbrick reveals in this electrifying history of the Pilgrims, the story of Plymouth Colony was a fifty-five year epic that began in peril and ended in war. New England erupted into a bloody conflict that nearly wiped out the English colonists and natives alike. These events shaped the existing communites and the country that would grow from them.
"This book is situated within the terrain of intense debate over the placement and displacement of monuments to difficult histories. Installed in Plymouth in 1921 to commemorate the Tercentenary of the landing of the Pilgrims, Cyrus Dallin's statue Massasoit was intended to memorialize the Pokanoket Massasoit (leader) 8sãameeqan as a welcoming diplomat and participant in the mythical first Thanksgiving. But Massasoit did not remain only in Plymouth. Lisa Blee and Jean O'Brien track the physical and narrative mobility of Massasoit through its inception and its movement to numerous locations in the US to illuminate how Massasoit's attachment to national origins did and did not move with the installations. The historical memory surrounding Massasoit suggests both the rich potential of Indigenous public historians to intervene in sanitized national narratives of origins, and the ways in which this history is commodified. Can Massasoit prompt viewers to reckon with ... the structural violence of settler colonialism in commemorative landscapes, or does it further entrench celebratory narratives of national origins?"--
