TAUNTON — Hostilities between English
settlers and Native Americans came to a head in this city that now, 331 years
later, is welcoming a tribal casino within its borders.
In
1671, commissioners of the Massachusetts Bay Colony invited Metacomet, also
known as King Philip, the son of Massasoit and then leader of Wampanoag Nation,
to Taunton for a meeting with English settlers, according to S.H. Emery's
"History of Taunton Massachusetts: 1637-1893."
"Philip
was willing to proceed to Taunton Green, then called the Training Field, if
hostages were left. Williams and John Brown consented to remain," Emery
wrote.
Inside an old meetinghouse, colonists stood
on one side in "formal garbs, close shorn hair and solemn countenances," Emery
wrote. On the other side "appeared the tawny and ferocious countenances of
Indian warriors; their long, black hair hanging down their backs; their small
sunken eyes, gleaming with serpent fires ..."
Philip was confronted about reports he was
planning an attack on Taunton and other settlements. "He was covered with
confusion and in his panic acknowledged the truth of all their charges," Emery
wrote.
Philip surrendered his weapons, which
included guns, and "signed his submission," but in the next four years continued
to stockpile weapons for a battle that history now refers to as King Philip's
War.
That history could prove important because
to win federal approval of its proposed $500 million casino project in Taunton,
the Mashpee Wampanoag must
prove to the Bureau of Indian Affairs it has historic and cultural ties to
Taunton.
The tribe is asking the federal government
to take 146 acres in the Liberty and Union Industrial Park into federal trust,
along with 170 acres in Mashpee, for the tribe's initial reservation.
Environmental review
The federal bureau started an environmental
review of the land two weeks ago that is expected to take several months.
Meanwhile, the tribe is negotiating a compact with Gov. Deval Patrick for
payments in lieu of taxes. An announcement could come as early as this week as
the tribe races to meet a July 31 deadline imposed by the state law that
authorizes three casinos and a single slot parlor. The tribe's land into trust
application does not have to be completed by that date.
In a May decision that demonstrates the
importance of the historical ties, the bureau rejected the trust application of
the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians in California because it did not
"demonstrate it had a significant historic connection to the site."
Making the link between Indians and Taunton
is as easy as walking into the Old Colony Historical Society in the city, where
volumes of books and records are preserved.
But making the connection between the
Mashpee Wampanoag and the territory is not as clear, said William Hanna, a
retired Taunton High School teacher and historian who authored "A History of
Taunton, Massachusetts" in 2008.
Hanna spent hours sifting through records at
the historic society where he says there is no reference in official records to
specific Wampanoag tribes.
"Never, ever have I seen a distinction
between the Mashpee Wampanoag, Aquinnah Wampanoag or other Wampanoag tribes," he
said. "To say that the Mashpee Wampanoag have a historic tie to Taunton, nothing
I see proves that."
Of course, nothing disproves it either, he
said.
In his book, "The Wampanoag Indian
Federation: Indian Neighbors to the Pilgrims," Milton A. Travers wrote about a
Cohannet Wampanoag Tribe, which "occupied the territory including parts of the
present towns of Berkley, Mansfield, Norton and Raynham, and also a portion
within the present city limits of Taunton, Massachusetts."
The Cohannet are not among a list of state-
and federally recognized tribes still in existence.
The Mashpee Wampanoag declined a request by
the Times to release the documentation it presented as part of its application
to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and instead issued a statement.
"There are strong ties to the region with
excellent documentary support," tribal council Chairman Cedric Cromwell said.
"Federal and state agencies acknowledge Mashpee connections to the
archaeological record in the Taunton region. The preponderance of scholars who
have written on the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe sees our influence historically as
extending into the Taunton area, and there is linguistic support for that
argument, as well. Beyond this written evidence, we know of this connection
through our oral history, passed down from generation to generation."
false claims?
Other Massachusetts tribes unhappy about the
tribe's federal status are already attempting to poke holes in their historical
data.
At a bureau hearing in Taunton last week,
representatives of the Pocasset Wampanoag and the Massachusett tribe both
testified the Mashpee have no historic links to Taunton.
Pocasset leader George Buffalo Spring
rejected the Mashpee tribe's claims to Taunton land. "The Mashpee leadership
disrespects our Pokanoket ancestors and our lands by improperly making false
claims to reservation shop in Pocasset Pokanoket territories," he said.
But representatives of the Wampanoag Tribe
of Gay Head (Aquinnah), the only other federally recognized tribe in
Massachusetts, defended the Mashpee application, saying all of the Wampanoag
Nation has ties to Southeastern Massachusetts.
Officials at the Robbins Museum in
Middleboro, which is operated by the Massachusetts Archaeological Society and
has an extensive collection of Wampanoag artifacts from the region, were
reluctant to comment on the dispute except to say the region was a hotbed of
Indian activity.
The Times requested the tribe's application
and supporting documents in a Freedom of Information Act filing with the bureau.
Thus far, the bureau has only released documents filed five years ago in support
of taking 539 acres into trust in Middleboro, a proposal no longer on the
table.
But as they did in Middleboro, tribe
historians will likely point to the arrival of the Pilgrims and the "profound
and enduring changes" that resulted in the past 400 years. According to the
historical report drafted by Christine Grabowski for that 2007 application, "the
contemporary Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe descends from a band of Indians that was
part of the historic Pokanoket nation."
Pokanoket nation comprised a group of
"allied sachemships," numbering more than 30, under the leadership of one
Massasoit or supreme sachem, who when the Pilgrims landed was Ousamequin.
The various bands moved around to temporary
settlements on a seasonal basis "rather than specific fixed land-holdings in the
European fashion," Grabowski wrote.
PECK OF BEANS, JACKKNIFE
In his book "Mayflower," Nathaniel Philbrick
writes it was a raid led by Miles Standish in 1623 on the Massachusett tribe and
Massasoit's decision to befriend the Pilgrims that led to what is now referred
to as the Wampanoag Nation.
Massasoit's hold on the region came as a
result of the deaths of some influential Cape sachems, Philbrick wrote. "Over
the next few years, Massasoit established the Indian nation we now refer to as
the Wampanoag — an entity that may not even have existed before this crucial
watershed."
Like the Indians before them, colonists were
drawn to the region — known as Titicut and Cohannet — by the herring-rich
Taunton River.
Elizabeth Pole, according to historical
accounts, purchased land in 1637 for a "peck of beans and a jackknife," moving
from Dorchester to Taunton where there was more room for flocks and herds.
Though there is no official record, the Pole
legend is depicted on the city's seal.
The following year, 46 settlers purchased
land in a deed that bears King Philip's name, and Taunton was
incorporated.
In the years that followed,
Massasoit-controlled Indians and the settlers lived a mostly peaceful existence,
though by 1657 Massasoit's sons became increasingly troubled by the invasion of
colonists into their territories.
"Just a few months later, (Massasoit's son
Wamsutta) refused to part with a portion of the land his father had agreed to
sell" to Taunton, Philbrick wrote.
Philip also did not see things the way his
father did. In the years that followed that 1671 showdown with the colonists in
Taunton, Philip continued to plot his attack, Emery wrote.
It is the murder of Indian John Sassamon in
1675 that triggered the start of King Philip's War — a bloody conflict that
decimated the native population.
Taunton figured prominently in that war. On
June 24, 1675, "Edward Babbitt of Taunton was killed by an Indian of Philip's
band," Emery wrote.
A few days later, it was Taunton that was
designated as a rendezvous point for colonists where they gathered under the
command of Maj. William Bradford of Plymouth, according to Emery's book.
Philip was chased for a little more than a
year in a far-ranging war. In the final days of the conflict, on July 31, 1676,
Capt. Benjamin Church learned King Philip was about to cross the Taunton River
with a view of attacking the towns of Taunton and Bridgewater, Emery wrote. The
next day Church saw Philip on the banks of the river and fired at him, but he
escaped.
On Aug. 6, 1676, with the help of an Indian
informant, 26 Indians were captured in what is now Norton, Emery wrote.
The war ended that month with the killing of
King Philip at Mount Hope in Rhode Island.
All the while, the Mashpee Wampanoag
remained on Cape Cod, staying out of the conflict on land set aside for the
tribe by Richard Bourne, a Sandwich selectman.
Tribes join
After the war, the Mashpee Wampanoag
"absorbed the Coatuits, Satuits, Paupausits, Wakoquits, Ashimits and Weesquob
tribes," Travers wrote.
Mashpee opponents, like the Pocasset and
Massachusett tribes, will argue that's evidence Taunton and other areas of
Southeastern Massachusetts north of the Cape Cod Canal are outside the Mashpee
Wampanoag territory.
James Lynch, an ethno-historian hired by
Pocassets and towns like Halifax to counter the Mashpee Wampanoag claims, has
written the Mashpee can't make the historic and cultural claims necessary
because they don't exist.
"The eminent historian Bernard Lewis once
remarked that there are three kinds of history, recovered, remembered and
invented," Lynch wrote. "Mashpee's claims to Taunton are of the third
sort."
The Mashpee will likely counter they were
part of one nation under Massasoit and they, like the Aquinnah, are the tribes
that survived and continued to govern as a tribe throughout their history.
Unlike King Philip's War, it is a battle
likely to play out in a courtroom.
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