IslandRoar

Native Islanders

 
  

The Wampanoag are the Native American people that first settled Martha's Vineyard thousands of years ago.

Tribal legend has it that the Wampanoag giant, Moshup, dragged his toe in the ocean and formed the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard.

The scientific explanation is that the islands were once part of the mainland, and that, as the sea rose after the last Ice Age, the people who were to become the island Wampanoag merely decided to stay.

The Tribe was federally acknowledged in 1987. Today, the up-island town of Aquinnah is home to the Wampanoag. Here are most of the Tribal-owned lands, Tribal housing, and the Tribe's museum and cultural center.

The Wampanoag influence is an integral part of present day Martha's Vineyard culture.

Recently I was thinking about what it must have been like, to be part of the Tribe back in the day, before the white settlers. When nobody had ever heard of Martha's Vineyard, but instead, called this place Noepe, the Wampanoag word for land amid the streams.

There were several different villages scattered throughout the island, but even so, there must have been reasons to push the birch-bark canoes into the sea and venture off-island, seven miles across the sound to the mainland.

Tribal councils with the mainland Wampanoag? Hunting trips pursuing animals that didn't live here, such as bears or wolves? Marriages arranged to bring new blood on-island and off?

Then I thought, were these early islanders the same type of curiosity that modern-day vineyarders appear to be to many folks? Did the mainland Indians come up to them at, say, a wedding feast, and ask, "So, what's it like to live on an island?" Or, "What do you all do out there all winter?"

Because, though day-to-day Wampanoag living was probably much the same on or off-island, just as it is today for vineyarders and mainlanders, like today, there must've been some obvious differences.

Wampanoag from Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket were whalers extraordinaire. They are said to have taught the early white settlers this trade, thus kick-starting the whole whaling industry.

No such whaling on the mainland. But more human interaction maybe? Better game? Easier trading? Certainly, like today, more choices. And without having to paddle your canoe for hours across the sea, fighting the wind and waves.

It takes a certain type of person to live on an island. Let's face it; it takes a certain type of person to live just about anywhere you can think of.

And maybe it's just wistful thinking or plain craziness, but it dawned on me that I might have a lot more in common with these early Native islanders than I ever could have imagined.

 

Spin Cycle: Vacation

Growing up, we went on a family vacation every summer. My mother could not stand sand, so we were mountain people. Catskills, Poconos, Adirondacks.

For many years we stayed at a resort my parents had frequented with friends even before they were married. The owners knew us by name. There were cottages, but we stayed in the Main House where the rooms were large and airy.

Meals were served family style in the dining room. My sister and I planted ourselves outside it way before meal times, hoping to be delegated the all important task of ringing the bell.

The bell was heavy and golden. We took turns swinging it back and forth, clang-clanging it loudly in the open air as we skipped the paths, up by the cottages, then down past the Main House to the pool and around the huge old abandoned barn, summoning all the guests to come eat.

There was entertainment in the Clubhouse every night: live music, dancing, contests. One year my father judged the Costume Contest, and an older teen-aged girl trounced out the door in a huff when she was not chosen. She was, my parents informed us, a sore loser, something we were to avoid being at all costs.

We sipped cokes and watched our parents dance, then were pulled onto the dance floor with them to Alley Cat, Twist, and even, on occasion, to butcher the Tango.

When the band took a break we begged for quarters and met the other kids at the jukebox. It was the first place I heard "American Pie," which was so long it required two separate selections and additional change.

One year, primed for adventure, our gang of kids crossed the road and waded through the field of cows to the woods beyond, where we'd been told we'd find the remains of an old graveyard. The cows largely ignored us, but the bull, whom we'd been warned about, seemed intent on threatening us, and we wound up running for our lives (at least, that's how I very clearly remember it).

The gravestones were hidden under an overgrowth of vines and brush, but the ones we were able to uncover told stories of late 17th Century settlers with long Dutch surnames,  who lost wives and children far too young, burying them in what must have once been a family plot, 300 years before we stood there.

The summer I was 12, the resort's owners divorced and closed the place down. There were other mountains, other family vacation spots, but none, alas, with hidden graveyards guarded by fierce bulls, or serenaded by the sweet peal of a dinner bell.


Even though she is headed for Chicago, Jen is still hosting the Spin Cycle over at Sprite's Keeper, so head on over there right now and check out some more vacation Spins.

Family History

Remembering the Questions

The last survivor of the Titanic died recently. She was 97, only an infant on that tragic night.

My grandmother was born in 1900, so she would have been 12 when the Titanic went down. I wish I'd thought to ask her about it while she was alive.

I think like that a lot now. I'll read about how the Spanish Influenza pandemic  killed almost 700,000 Americans in 1918-1919, and I wonder what that was like for my grandmother. Surely she must have known people that got ill or died.

Don't get me wrong. I was very close to my grandmother. She lived to be 94 and I had many revealing conversations with her from the time I was young. My mother, for instance, was unaware that my grandmother had been engaged three times until I told her. She didn't realize there had been three additional siblings of my grandmother's that had died in infancy.

Like many parents, my grandmother was busy with her four children. Her husband died when they were still very young, and she had to go out in 1946 and work full time to support them. No doubt she didn't have much time for sharing old stories. But that had changed by the time she became a grandmother.

She told me stories about my mother, like the time she mistakenly made dates with two different boys for the same night, and they both showed up. She told me how she tightly bound her breasts to flatten them for the flapper styles of the 20's, and how she believed doing so had forever destroyed their shape.

But I was young. Not yet a mother myself, and still caught up in thinking she'd always be there. Now I wonder, what was it like to raise four children in the 40's and 50's alone? Did she date? How was it to live through World Wars I and II? To be 20 years old and the first generation of young women to get the vote?

I encourage my kids to question their grandparents about their lives whenever they see them. But ironically, it often seems we're unaware of what big questions we might have until it's too late to find out the answers.

What was it like to be a 12 year old girl in 1912 and hear about the sinking of that famous ship?

If only I'd thought to ask.