Now that I do know, I can’t unknow it. What do we do when things we thought were true turn out to not to be? How shall we respond when things we’ve managed to not know come knocking on our conscience demanding to be acknowledged.

Acknowledging events of the past seems to be a good starting place. With that in mind, I offer this land acknowledgment statement:

As I prepare these words for you to read, I acknowledge the sacred lands on which I now live, giving thanks to those Indigenous Peoples who nourished this place, and who are still among us today, in spite of the many broken promises that I mourn. As I know more, may I do more to help pave a path forward, working together to nourish this land for the benefit of all people.

Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890

Ever hear of the Morrill Acts? I did not until I was trying to figure what was located on the land currently occupied by the Ohio State University Newark Campus. It turns out that campus is not the result of these acts. However, The Ohio State University main campus, sprawling over 1,700 acres of Columbus, is one of two land grant institutions in this state. The other one is Central Ohio State University. Curious to know more, I read several articles about land grant colleges.

These are institutions designated to receive funds from the Morrill acts. A total of 57 institutions of higher education benefitted from the 1862 act and another 19 from the 1890 act. In 1857 Congressman Justin Morrill of Vermont introduced a bill that eventually passed in 1862. It seems it’s always taken a long time for an idea to meander through the legislative process.

After the Civil War, Congress established a funding system to assist states in modernizing their higher educational systems. The 1862 Morrill Act gave federal land to states to establish colleges. The intended purpose was to teach agriculture, science, military science, and engineering, without eliminating other scientific and classical subjects. The goal was to expand higher education beyond Latin, Greek and mathematics.

The 1887 federal Hatch Act established an agricultural experiment station at these institutions to do research on best agricultural practices. The second Morrill Act in 1890 required former Confederate states to either provide access to land grant universities, regardless of race, or to provide separate educational options for white and black students. The result was the creation of nineteen additional HBCU – Historically black colleges and universities.

Expansion and Shifting Priorates

By 1914 these land grant institutions had strong political support, enabling them to expand the definition and scope of university course offerings. Over time most land grant institutions evolved into a network of large state universities. For example, the Ohio State student enrollment hovers between 45,000 to 50,000 every year. Today large state universities often dominate the news because their premier athletic events more than their focus on researching agricultural advances. Universities do what they can to attract and keep donors.

Revisiting the Past

According to an August 18, 2020  High Country News article, 52 of the Morrill Act institutions were funded with land stolen from Indigenous Peoples. The article includes the content of a letter preserved by the family of a Native American known as Captain Jim. He received the letter from a U. S. Indian Agent on Department of the Interior, Indian Service letterhead. Written from Fort Hall May 18, 1900, it reads, “Captain Jim, an Indian of this reservation, has permission to be absent for a period of ten days to visit Boise, Idaho. Captain Jim is a leading Indian and chief on this reservation and his tribe formerly roamed in the neighborhood of Boise. He is commended to all persons as being a good Indian, friendly to the whites and deserving of consideration.”

Wow. An adult man needed to carry a letter verifying he had permission to walk about the land that once belonged to his people. The article states that nearly 11 million acres of land was acquired, from an estimated 250 tribes, bands and Indigenous communities. Over 160 deals were brokered through violence, treaties made and later ignored, or pressured transfer of land ownership. The 1862 Morrill Act stipulated that those receiving the land sell it for the benefit of the new institutions. The plan raised close to $18 million for the initial 52 institutions by early in the 20^th century.

Doing Better

When I wrote Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures I learned about a partnership between a university and the Pokanoket people in the area. Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, is named for the 17^th Century minister who helped establish Rhode Island. Over the past few years university leaders have partnered with Pokanoket leaders to learn, retain, and disseminate the history of the area Indigenous people who once roamed freely where the university is now located.

For example, a group of students produced a booklet that documents the oral history Pokanoket people have passed down through a dozen generations, dating back to the 1600s and earlier. Massasoit Ousamequin called on the early English settlers in Cape Cod to work out the first treaty between Indigenous people and the English speaking people we know as the Pilgrims.

Historical facts don’t change, but how we preserve, record, and teach them does from generation by generation. Though some of what I learn is hard to accept, it also gives me hope that by learning more, together we can do more to partner more going forward.

Are there any historical discoveries that have influenced how you think about things? Click this link to check out land grant colleges in your state.

Thank you for reading along. If you’ve enjoyed this bit of history, you might also enjoy  my posts on Substack.

I write about a variety of topics, but focus on how history influences our present and informs our future.

Mary Brewster’s Love Life and Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures: available wherever books are sold. Bookshop.org/Mayflower; Mary BrewsterAmazon.com/Mary Brewster’s Love Life
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles
BarnesandNoble/MaryBrewster
Autographed copies are available on my website.

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The Wampanoag have inhabited this area for 15,000 years, and provided lifesaving survival skills and assistance to people arriving from Europe and Great Britain in the early 17th century. However, few Americans are fully aware that Native communities are still here and nurturing a beautiful living culture consisting of Earth-based spirituality, language revival, and environmental caretaking and consciousness.

The good news is that today Native people – and those who want a more complete and accurate history of this continent – are starting to receive more attention and traction. The not-so-good news is that many people in the United States are still perfectly content to ignore the history and rights of Indigenous people, even dismissing Native culture as past history. All too often, Indigenous people are still mentioned in the past tense in the schools, history classes, books, articles, and essays.

The traditional term for a Wampanoag community leader is sachem. The role of the sachem is to provide egalitarian leadership and facilitate consensus based decision-making. Historically, sachems worked alongside everyone else to provide food and shelter for the community. They have held specific roles, but not in the context of hierarchy as it is understood in European societies.

Women are Equals

One aspect of Wampanoag culture that truly baffled English men first negotiating trade and other deals was the matrilineal nature of Wampanoag community. Women wielded great influence within the community. Time after time an English man approached a Wampanoag man, only to be directed to talk to a Wampanoag woman. Wampanoag communities typically choose sachems through the mother’s line. If no qualified leader is available there, the community chooses someone else, usually with the consensus of the elder women. Leaders are chosen for their natural leadership abilities.

The Wampanoags, along with thousands of others in adjacent Native communities, had been taking care of the land for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. In Europe, a few wealthy people owned most of the land and controlled it with deeds. The Wampanoag and other groups view Mother Earth as sacred, and care for her accordingly. Owning land is as far fetched as the idea of owning the air or rain. In contrast,  Europeans risked the treacherous trans-Atlantic journey hoping to own a piece of land, something not likely to ever happen for them back in Europe.

Tragedies to Address

In the years right before the Mayflower sailed into Cape Cod Bay the Native people had to deal with two assaults to their peaceful way of life. The first occurred in 1614 when English Captain Hunt kidnapped 19 young Wampanoag men and a half dozen other Native people to sell as slaves in Europe. These kidnappings naturally made Indigenous people suspicious of all Europeans. The second disaster was the series of epidemics from 1616 to 1619. Native people had no immunity to European-imported diseases like Yellow Fever that left three out of every four in their graves. Entire villages were wiped out. The Wampanoag refer to this period as the Great Dying.

By the time the Mayflower arrived, the Wampanoag population was reduced to around 30,000 inhabiting 40 villages. At that time, Ousamequin was the great sachem among

sachems – the Massasoit. He bore much of the responsibility for leading the Wampanoag after the devastation described above. As I wrote in a previous blog about Massasoit Ousamequin, this  shaped how he and others interacted with the English settlers in 1620 and 1621.

Seasons of Change

Initially, the fledgling English settlements had little impact on the Wampanoag, who spent their summers closer to the ocean, tending their gardens and supplementing their diets with fish, lobster, and other creatures caught from the sea and rivers. Each spring Wampanoag women prepared the fields for planting, using fish caught by men in the annual herring run to the enrich the soil. They grew corn, squash and beans. When summer gave way to fall, they moved inland where they hunted in the forests. They also tapped maple syrup and dined on cranberries and other wild plants.

Sleeping benches along the perimeter

During this time period Wampanoag lived in wetus, dome-shaped homes built with wood poles, bark, and cattail reeds, leaving a hole in the roof for smoke to escape from fires used for cooking and warmth. People slept on benches along the perimeter. (Photos by author at Plimoth Plantation Wampanoag Village, Plymouth, MA)

Early European sleeping closet

Sleeping quarters for people in Europe weren’t much more luxurious. With the exception of royalty and the very wealthy, a typical “bedroom” in a European home of the same era might be an over-sized closet where adults slept sitting up. Children slept on bedding spread on the floor by night and stored in the closet by day. (Photo by author in a 15th-century home at American Pilgrim Museum in Leiden, Netherlands)

Adaptation of the Cultures

The Wampanoag are highly spiritual in nature. They believe a divine spirit blessed them with the gifts from the land and had well developed rituals to express their gratitude. The Wampanoag have a reciprocal relationship with the land that gives them life and they care for it in return.

Massasoit Ousamequin initiated a treaty with the first English settlers, and several friendships between the two cultures followed. A generation later two pivotal events pitted the two cultures against each other. The first was Ousamequin’s death in 1661. Before he died he asked the English to give his two sons English names. His older son, Wamsutta, was re-named Alexander. His younger son, Metacomet, was re-named Philip. Wamsutta/Alexander followed his father as the great sachem when Ousamequin died. After meeting with the English, he became violently ill and perished, leaving his younger brother to take his place. A record from the Plymouth Council from that era records the purchase of poison “to rid ourselves of a pest.”

Metacomet/King Philip, grew increasingly concerned about the second alarming situation. The first English settlers operated more or less under a “live and let live” philosophy, in part because they were desperate and needed Native assistance to survive; but also, because they got to know the Wampanoag as neighbors. Later arrivals, no longer in danger of starving, brought insatiable appetites for more and more land and drove Native peoples further and further away. King Philip decided the only way to preserve their way of life was to chase the Europeans away once and for all.

In terms of the percentage of the population dead because of it, King Philip’s War was more deadly than the Civil War. The Wampanoag lost the war, their land, their relatives, and much of their way of life.

Life Today

Though significantly reduced in number, the Wampanoag people survived. Today there are an estimated 12,000 Wampanoag, living mainly in the Massachusetts and Cape Cod area. The few Wampanoag currently living in the Caribbean probably descend from ancestors taken there as slaves. Some Wampanoag live at Gay Head on Martha’s Vineyard, some in Mashpee on Cape Cod, where there is a museum; and others are scattered in a variety of places.

So, what? you may ask. That happened 400 years ago. Who cares about that today?

I care for two reasons. First, a community founded on genocide is a community in need of repentance. Secondly, the earth groans with the consequences of centuries of neglect and abuse. Indigenous people know how to care for the earth. We do ourselves a great service when not only learn about the Wampanoag and their past; but also learn from them today.

We can’t undo history; but we can learn from it and do better going forward.

Thank you for taking time learn more about the history of the people who saved the lives of the people we credit with establishing our modern Thanksgiving tradition. I hope you found this informative and inspiring. If so, please take another minute to forward this to a friend. If you got this from a friend, you can have your very own free subscription by signing up at up at HowWiseThen. One of the gifts I have for you is a schedule of the many events scheduled to commemorate the first encounters between the English and the Wampanoag. Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures will be released next year to tell a more complete story of what happened 400 years ago.

If you enjoyed this blog you may also enjoy an earlier one I wrote about Ousamequin as the Wampanoag Massasoit

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