Historic Nantucket, Winter 1996, Vol. 43 No. 4

WINTER 1996

Nantucket's Native Americans

From the President his winter issue of Historic Nantucket focuses on the original Native population of the island. Those people, the first "on-islanders," left a fascinating heritage that, fortunately, can be researched through archaeological investigation. The NHA's interest in that period demonstrates the broad scope of its historical vision and its mission to make that history known to Nantucketers of today, and tomorrow.

Endless thanks to all of you whose overwhelmingly generous response to our 1995 Annual Appeal has, at this writing, reached a record-breaking total. We are still receiving gifts, and therefore have every expectation that the total will grow.

A major factor in this success is the generosity of first-time donors and of prior donors who increased the amount of their giving. The present total exceeds the Challenge Fund of $25,000, set up by a few very special friends of the association to match the new and augmented gifts.

Your contributions speak louder than any words could about your appreciation for, and commitment to, the work of the Nantucket Historical Association and what it means to you. These monies will substantially underwrite our 1996 operating budget. We are preparing exciting new exhibits, programs, and lectures to offer during the coming season.

Your board of directors and the NHA staff join me in wishing you the best in the New Year. You, the members, make the Nantucket Historical Association what it is and what it will become. Thank you.

T Douglas K. Burch, Editor Helen Winslow Chase, Historian Claire E. O'Keeffe, Art Director

Elizabeth Oldham, Copy Editor Photos: NHA collections unless otherwise credited

Native American Symposium

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A Report

Beyond Repatriation (or How the "Other" Became the "We") Richard West

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Nathaniel Philbrick

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The Whipping Post

Departments What's News at the NHA

Items of Interest

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109 THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION OFFICERS Mrs. William Slover, President Mr. David H . Wood, First Vice President Mrs. Willia m B. Macom ber, Second Vice President Mr. Nan F. Atwood, Treasurer Mrs. Hamilton Heard, Jr., Secretary Ms. jean M. Weber, Executive Director

BOARD OF TRUSTEES Mr. Al,1n F. Atwood

Mr. Erwin L Greenberg Mrs. William E. Grieder Prof. William A. Hance Mrs. Hamilton Heard, Jr. Mrs. William B. Macomber Mrs. Ca rl M. MueUcr

Mrs. Cha rles Balas Mrs. Richard L Brecker Mrs. Robert Champion Miss ancy A. Chase M3. Kimberly C. Corkran Mrs. Thomo.1s H. Gosnell

~~A~~~~R~d~.ij~.

Mr. Alfred F. Sanford Ill Mrs. William L.Siover Rev. Georgia Ann Snell Mr. Richard Tucke r

Mr. David H. Wood

ADVISORY BOARD Mr. Walter Bcinccke, Jr. Ms. Patricia A. Butler Mr. Alcon Chadwick Mrs. james F. Chase Mr. Mich.1cl dcleo Mrs. Wnlkcr Groctzinger Mrs. Herbert L. Gutterson Mrs. Robert E. Hel lman Mrs. john G. W. Husted

Mr. Robert F. Mooney Mr. Peter Nash Mrs. Frederick A. Richmond

Mrs. Arthur Jacobsen Mrs. JaneT. L..,,mb Mr. Francis D. Lethb ridge Mr. Regina ld levine

Mrs. William A. Sevrens Mr. Scott Steams

Mrs. John A. Lodge Mrs. Thomas B. LOring

Mr. Joseph F. Welch Mr. Johri 5. Winter

Mr. Pa ul Madden Mr. Willia m B. Macomber

Mrs. Joseph C. Woodle Mrs. Braccbridge Young

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Mrs. Dwight Beman Mr. Richard L. Brecker

Mr. Robert F. Mooney Ms. Elizabeth Old ham

On the Cover A portion of Reverend F. C. Ewer's 1869 "Historical Map of Nantucket" showing the location of the Miacomet Indian Burial Ground.

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Mr. Nathaniel Philbrick Mrs. L William Seidman Mrs. Susan ~el Tiffney Mr. David H.

Wood

Hi<loric NnH tucket welcomes articles on any aspect of Na ntuc ket history.

Ongmal research, firsthand accoun ls, and remiruscences of island experiences, historic logs, letters, and photographs are examples of materials of mtcrest to our readers. We expect artides to be entertaining and instructive for a general audience and to adhere to high standa rds of fustorical accuracy.A lthough H1stor1C Nm1tucketlacks the space to print notes or bibliograp hies, we encourage our authors to use documentation and will ma ke a nno ta ted copies ava il able a t the NHA 's Resea rch Cente r. Historic Nnn tucket strives to publish enjoyable reading that will promote public appreciation of Nantucker s history and preserve important infonnation abou t the island's past.

Historic NmJtucket (ISSN 0439-2248) is published quarterly as a pri vilege of membership by the Nantucket Historical Association, 2 Whaler's Lane, Nantucket, MA 02554 Second-class postage pa id at Nantucket, MA Postmaste r: Send address changes to Historic Na11tucket, Box 1016,

Nantucket, MA 02554-1016 FAX: 508.228.5618

From the Executive Director

T

he Congressional mandate to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) by November 15, 1995, prompted a thorough review of the NHA's archaeological collections and an inventory and analysis of the bone fragments of seventeen individual human remains stored at the Gosnold Center. It also gave the association a long overdue opportunity to examine its responsibilities to research and represent original populations and prehistoric periods in island history.

Concerns raised about the required inventory of those remains and of funerary objects led Michael Jehle, our curator of collections, to organize a symposium on "Nantucket and the Native American Legacy of New England." Guest speakers included Dr. Elizabeth Little, who serves

as our curator of prehistoric archeology and, as such, has voluntarily carried the responsibilities for our Native American materials and led archaeological investigations on the island for many years.

This issue of Historic Nantucket was originally intended to extend the life of the symposium beyond two short days in August by publishing the presentations.

However, many of the papers were research works in progress and some were on a trial run for publication commitments elsewhere. Other presentations were never intended to be scholarly papers. In particular, the participation of Nanepashemet and of Slow Turtle (John Peters), and Russell Gardner's blessing at the Indian Burial Ground were, for everyone involved, personal experiences that would be difficult to

report. And so this issue, which the editorial board had originally conceived as a publication of transcripts from the symposium, is greatly enhanced by an address from Richard West, director of the Smithsonian Institution's new Museum of the American Indian, and by a preview of the first chapter of Nat Philbrick's forthcoming book.

We hope that what we present in this issue of Historic Nantucket will stimulate and engage dialog concerning the tragic impact of colonialism on Nantucket's Native Americans and on the continuously evolving attitudes toward all Native Americans to and beyond the present day.

Jean Weber

I WHAT'S NEWS AT THE NHA aia Gaillard has joined the NHA staff as director of development and public relations. Her life-long ties to Nantucket come full circle as she returns to the island after ten years in Northern California, where she served as public affairs assistant and coordinator of publications at Sonoma State University. She is a twentyfive-year veteran of the graphic arts, public relations, and advertising professions, including a sevenyear stint owning and operating Nantucket's first fullservice advertising agency from 1978 to 1985.

Gay! Michael, a longtime NHA staffer, is the Gay/ Michael (left), NHA research librarian, and Main Gaillard, newly appointed director of development and public relations. association's new research librarian, taking on this assignment following the You are always welcome to visit the assomembers who devote their time and skills completion of her duties as archivist of ciation executive offices at Two Whalers to managing the business of the NHA. Lane, and to meet these and other staff the Stackpole papers.

M

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A Repo~ on the NHA Symposium: Nantucket and the Native American Legacy of New England The symposium, organized btJ NHA curator Michael Jehle, was held at Nantucket High School last August.

Capacity audiences attended the series of talks concerning the people who for three thousand years before European settlement made this sandy island their home.

Participants in this symposium were: NANEPASHEMIT A lender of the Assonet band of the Wampanoag nation and director/curator of the Wampanong Indian Program at Plimoth Plantation.

NATHANIEL PHILBRICK Independent scholar in American studies, writer, and historical researcher.

ELIZABETH LITTLE The NHA's long-time volunteer Curator of Prehistoric Archneolog~;.

TIMOTHY J. LEPORE Chief of Medicine nt Nantucket Cottage Hospital and enthusiastic amateur archaeologist.

M ICHAEL GIBBONS Professor and Chairman-elect of the Anthropolog~; Department, University of Massachusetts, Boston.

SLOW TURTLE (JOHN PETERS) Supreme Medicine Man of the Wampanong nation and Director of the Commission on Indian Affairs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Following are synopses of Michael Jehle's introductory remarks and of the participants' presentations.

MICHAEL JEHLE: In the late 1640s, when Thomas Mayhew first came to Nantucket as a missionary from Martha's Vineyard, he found more than three thousand native people living here. The people he found were part of a vast and culturally complex community that extended from Saco Bay, Maine, to the Housatonic River area in

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Connecticut, and from Long Island inland and the island's relatively high density of to southern New Hampshire and population contributed to periodic near Vermont. With a few minor exceptions, famine and chronic malnutrition.

It was not long after Thomas Mayhew's the Indians who occupied that region spoke closely rela ted dialects of the missionary expeditions to Nantucket that a Algonquin language and subs isted gr o up of English settlers came to the th rough cultiva ting maize, beans, and island, in part to escape the cultural and squash and with fishing and hunting and religious constraints of the Massachusetts gathering.

Bay Colony's Puritanism, but primarily in The native Nantucketers whom search of land and agricultural resources.

Mayhew met were part of a political feder- By the time those settlers arrived in the ation, known today as the Wampanoag middle of the seventeenth century, Nation, within the Algonquin cultural Nantucket's native population had already region. The Wampanoag Nation com- experienced more than a century of conprised what is today eastern Rhode Island tact with explorers and fishermen, and a and southeastern Massachusetts, including decade or more of continuous association Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard. When with the Mayhews through their missionMayhew made his first contact with the ary work.

Nantucket Indians there were four tribes, Religious bigotry, cultural bias, and a or sachernships, occupying different areas materialistic view of the world kept those of the island. Day-to-day leadership of early European visitors from understandeach of the distinct communities was pro- ing and appreciating the spiritual, culturvided by a chief, or sachem. The two al, and intellectual richness of the native largest tribes, led by the Sachems peoples they encountered, so they recordWanachmamack and Nickanoose, occu- ed very little of the life and culture of pied the eastern part of the island from the Nantucket's Indians. Our documented harbor south to the Madequecham VaUey. knowledge of the first Nantucketers dates Two smaller communities along the south from after European settlement of the shore were led by Sachems Spotso and island. Native social structures and life styles were altered through increasing Attapeat.

Like the Wampanoags on the main- European interaction and economic land, the Nantucketers' lives evolved with exploitation, so that our perception of the seasons. They maintained extensive Nantucket's Indians is colored by the biascultivated fields and fished both the es and naivete of those early European ocean's shore and the island's fresh water settlers.

Today, increasing numbers of scholars ponds, occasionally supplementing their diet with pelagic mammals like humpback are working to cut through those biases to whales, blackfish, and seals. Life on obtain a deeper understanding of, and Nantucket's sandy soil was far from idyl- relationship with, the culture and civilizalic. Harvests ranged from minimal to poor tion of the first Nantucketers.

Miacomet Indian Burial Ground marker NANEPASHEMET: Oral tradition tells us that there were people on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard when you could still walk there, before the melting of the glaciers and the subsequent rise in the ocean's level. That tradition talks about transitions and changes. As their homes became islands the life styles of the people changed, but they retained the language, technologies, and social and political cultures of their mainland brothers'.

There is convincing evidence of extensive trade between the islanders and mainland communities. Bowls made of soapstone from quarries in Johnstown, Rhode Island, attest to that trade. Contact with early European traders is suggested by artifacts of copper and brass that came from the coast of Maine.

The early inhabitants of Nantucket were a cosmopolitan people whose horizons extended well beyond the shores of the island long before the first Europeans arrived.

and shore whaling was a well-established practice by the time Europeans came to the island. The Indians undertook to help the settlers exploit this unique resource, and their importance in that endeavor was recognized in 1692 when the colony of New York levied a tax on whales, except those that belonged to the Indians. As whalers and crew members Nantucket Indians were instrumental in the success of island whaling.

TiMOTHY J. LEPORE: 358 Native Americans lived on Nantucket in the early months of 1763. Between August of that year and February of 1764, 222 of them died of a disease, the nature of which has

never been clearly delineated.

Contemporary sources describe a "yellow plague" with high fever, pain, a jaundiced appearance, and swelling of the neck. The affliction was not recognized by island physicians or bone setters, who had experience with other epidemic diseases and would have been able to identify the "sickness" had it been one of them. Today, by a process of elimination, it may be possible to make an educated guess about the identity of the killer.

By excluding diseases like smallpox, typhus, plague, measles, diphtheria, and scarlet fever, all of which were known to island medical practitioners and shared some, but not all, of the symptoms of the "Indian Sickness," Dr. Lepore made a good case for louse-borne relapsing fever as the actual malady. The disease's vector is the human body louse. Contemporary accounts all point toward the proper conditions for the spread of the disease that supposedly was brought to Nantucket by sick crew members of an Irish trading ship.

Louse-borne relapsing fever exists today in Thailand and Ethiopia and was contracted by some of our troops in Vietnam and Somalia. It is caused by a type of bacterium called a spirochete, as are Lyme disease and syphilis. While the true identity of the "Indian Sickness" remains a mystery, louse-borne relapsing fever surely meets the criteria as we know them today.

MICHAEL GIBBONS: The scientific analysis of skeletal artifacts can tell a great deal about the individual. Characteristics such as age, sex, stature, ancestry, and general health can be ascertained with a great degree of accuracy.

Studies of the 500- to 1,000-year-old

NATHANIEL PHILBRICK: Portrayals of the local Indian culture by the European settlers and their descendants and subsequently in western literature have been instrumental in generating and perpetuating many of the misperceptions of Nantucket Indians that persist to this day.

ELIZABETH LITTLE: Long before the settlers arrived the Indians knew and appreciated "Pootop," the Wampanoag word for whale. Stranded whales were a welcome and important addition to their larders

Miacomet Indian Burial Ground

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Nathnniel Philbrick

Dr. Timothy f. Lepore

Michne/ Gibbons

By law, an Indian is "a ward of the govknowledge and experience gives purpose skeletal remains of 31 pre-contact to their lives. ernment." Since he pays taxes, he is nut n Nantucket individuals- 11 females, Unlike most other Indian tribes, the 15 males, and 5 infants, the latter of undeward but a citizen and he devotes much of Wampanoags have not been moved to termined sex - provide a valid sample. his time and effort working politically as a new locations. They remain on their origiThe findings from these examinations citizen to promote regulation and legtsbwhen compared to studies of similar nal lands, both physical and spiritual. tion to expedite the return of India··, Because of this the Wampanoags are vitalmainland remains lead to some fascinatremains, artifacts, and grave items " ... that ly concerned that their consecrated places ing conclusions. have been held hostage in the dusty b<Jt:k should be preserved, that remains and Although the incidence of periodontal rooms of museums .. . " to proper bttrial artifacts be reinterred in the places they diseases among the Nantucket Indians grounds. was unusually large, and osteoarthritis were found. Slow Turtle complimented Many of Slow Turtle's concerns ME the people of Nantucket for their sensitiviwas fairly prevalent as well, they were taller, more powerful and robust, longer ty in this regard. addressed in the foll owing article, lived, and, for the most part, healthier With humor, Slow Turtle pointed out which suggests a new and different than their mainland counterparts. The that he is a Wampanoag, not an Indian. course for museum practices. average height of the males was 5 feet, 9 1/2 inches; that of the females, 5 feet, 3 inches. The average age of the males was 35 years, 6 months; of females, 25 c w <.;"'l-t ·fo.-anL ~~ ."!": '' ,.,.r'/7u:-cy ,"'?1-lr uJ/ rn years, 8 months. These average ages t-It ,f.;;, ~~ ~f,l~ ~~,..

6, t.t.

•· 't/tUlJtln_ ~ 'l,.,, 'l ,..uy -,.4.

I t'I.C/(t'""'-.16 1 are 3 1/ 2 to 4 years older than the average age of mainland Indians of the Jcu.A.c A L~- 1 <-<:.., 1 4. r.. f .o f..c • I o•.,... ..(tu:-~ a ...~Ju~ ti Hie 9"-«J a?1J '! , c ' ~ same period. ct..(~ ., ·~· It seems apparent that island living /~tJi"- vi t'l.f1t cf.~';Jj' ,:) ') !£, ~ ...) agreed with these earliest inhabitants ~t. 1-- C..l ·.~ n~j /-i.L/t~tlt ~/ ~~t ~'' t' t' ~ 'LD and that they prospered in this environment.

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His role as a Mashpee Wampanoag is to give back to his people their story of creation and the way of life derived from it. The Wampanoag tradition holds that the Great Spirit placed all living things on the earth and instructed each one as to its purpose. Birds migrate, trees bear fruit, fish swim near to shore all living things function according to these instructions. Every human being, therefore, has a unique set of instructions. People may not know why they are here, but sharing their

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A portion of the earliest Indian deed 0 11 town records, dated May 10, 1660.

On the Repatriation of Native Atnerican Retnains he Nantucket Historical Association has recently completed an extensive analysis of segments of its T Native American collection in compliance with the federally mandated repatriation of Native human remains and ceremonial artifacts (Native American Graves Protection and Rehabilitation Act, known as NAGPRA). That process has been a wonderful catalyst for serious and exciting debate within the museum community concerning the importance and function of Native American collections- a debate from which the NHA is not immune. Like most similarly sized history museums, the NHA's collection of Native materials, while facilitating considerable and important archaeological research and publication, has long been relegated to a marginal and inconsequential role within the NHA's collecting mission and within its larger programming and exhibits.

The following article is adapted from a speech by Richard West, director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian. It touches on some of the important issues that all museums now face as they grapple with the future of their Native American collections. While there are certainly considerable differences in degree and scope between the NHA's and the Smithsonian's collections, Mr. West's arguments have important implications not only to the physical development of the NHA's collections but to the growth of our institutional relationship with the larger Wampanoag Indian community. The NHA's collection represents the only physical link with the now extinct Nantucket Indian tribe, and its use and advancement must undoubtedly play an increasingly important role in the Wampanoag's quest for cultural and historical identity.

Beyond Repatriation (Or How the "Other" Became the "We") Richard West s I prepared this address I reflected on a recent conversation between two very distinguished members of my board of trustees. The subject of their conversation was the museum's magnificent collection, which is, without qualification, the finest collection of Native materials of the Western Hemisphere in the entire world.

These two trustees were as one in their enthusiasm for the collection, which they described with a passion that was almost palpable - its depth, its breadth, the sheer beauty of the materials in it.

As I listened to their conversation, it became equally clear to me that they also had truly, if not profoundly, divergent views about the museum's ultimate institutional role vis-a-vis the collection. The first trustee viewed the museum, primarily if not exclusively, as a repository for a collection that is, by anyone's definition, a national treasure. And that trustee also viewed the collection, in many respects, as an end in itself, to be preserved for the

A

ages as a fitting national memorial to the vast cultural achievements of the Native peoples of this hemisphere.

The second trustee saw the collection far more as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself - an immensely important beginning point of cultural inquiry and interpretation. Those ends were several but can be summarized approximately in the following manner and not in any particular order: (1) to document the historic culture and, perhaps even more important, to preserve the living, contemporary culture of the Native peoples of this Hemisphere; (2) in accomplishing this mission, to use the collection as the basis of a unique and, in many respects, unprecedented collaboration and cooperation between the museum and Native community itself; and (3) in combination with both these missions, to employ the collection as a powerful vehicle for enlightening the entire world about the past, present, and yet-to-come cultural achievements of the

Native peoples of the New World.

I realize that the two trustees' views of the collection and its use have much commonality, but I believe you also understand that their outlooks reflect an intrinsic tension. Although the conversation I have just recounted did occur, you probably have surmised by this point that I also am speaking metaphorically.

That exchange between our two trustees speaks volumes about a very real tension within the museum community and between the Native and museum communities regarding this nation's great collections of Native materials. The National Museum of the American Indian stands squarely at the center of that tension regarding the uses and dispositions of collections of Native materials. More important, the museum, because of its sheer institutional weight and visibility in our museum community, is constrained, in my view, to serve as a powerful and thoughtful catalyst for change and healing

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in resolving this tension. Thus, I would like to outline how the National Museum of the American Indian views these fundamental and admittedly difficult questions and where we are going with them.

The most obvious and often controversial manifestation of the tension I have just described is, indeed, the "R" word, repatriation. I always have deeply regretted that we did not heed the alarm of my friend and colleague, Nancy Lurie of the Milwaukee Public Museum, when, with respect to the issue of Indian human remains, she wrote a decade and a half ago: What is needed, in my opinion, is the development of rational discussion between archaeologists and Indian people to indicate what archaeology does ... and how the archaeologists' findings can serve Indian people in clarifying knowledge of th ei r history ... And archaeologists should consider the prevalent double standard that if Euroamerican bones are uncovered accidentally in forgotten graveyards, they are usually packed off for reburial in some local churchyard while Indian bones inevitably end up in archaeological laboratories and museums.

The rest, of course, is history and fairly unfortunate history at that. Dr. Lurie's "rational discussion," for the most part, did not occur, and the issue became increasingly politicized and highly polarized. As all of us well know, the Na-tive community finally sought redress in the Congress and ultimately achieved there what it had been unable to accomplish in direct dealings with museums.

Without intending at all to be recriminatory and obviously with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I believe that our museum community, including the august institution that I now call home, brought much of this polarization on ourselves because, in candor, we stonewalled the issue when we should have been discussing it. We also miscalculated the utter dedication of the Native community to its position and were, in my personal view, probably far too protective for too long of the museum world as many of us then knew it.

Ironically, however, my purpose is not to discuss the relative merits of repatriation and certainly not to relitigate "who struck John" as between the museum and Native communities. As important as the issue of repatriation is, as complex as it will be, and as much of our time as it will consume over the next several years, I

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Archaeological dig, south shore ofTuckernuck Island, August 1975.

Only through planned and well-documented archaeological excavations can Nantucket's early history be authenticated and preserved.

believe that we sometimes become so obsessed with it that we run the risk of missing the forest for the trees. In the end, repatriation, in my own mind, merely reflects and grows out of a number of far broader principles, those more fundamental winds of change that are blowing through our community and probably will alter it forever. I thus would like to focus on a number of those broad principles because it is these underlying philosophical tenets that actually drive the National Museum of the American Indian and make it such a powerful potential force for change.

If I could capture these principles in a single mission statement, it probably would be something like the following:

work Predicament of Cultu re: TwentiethCentury Ethnoqraphy, Literature, and Art that captured my thought perfectly. Here what he said:

IS

The mission of the National Museun1 of the American Indian is to interpret and represent, through multiple voices, including those of Natives themselves, all aspects of Native culture of the Western Hemisphere as living, dynamic cultural phenomena.

Throughout the world indigenous populations have had to reckon with the forces of "progress" and "national" unification. The results have been both destructive and inventive. Many traditions, languages, cosmologies, and values are lost, some literally murdered; but much has simultaneously been invented and revived in complex, oppositional contexts. If the victims of progress and empire are weak, they are seldom passive. It used to be assumed, for example, that conversion to Christianity in Africa, Melanesia, Latin America, or even colonial Massachusetts would lead to the extinction of indigenous cultures rather than to their transformation. Something more ambiguous and historically complex has occurred, requiring that we perceive both the end of certain orders of diversity and the creation or translation of others ... .

Let me now discuss these principles more specifically by parsing my hypothetical statement of mission.

The first of these principles goes to the living and dynamic nature of Native culture. I remember reading a passage in the introduction to James Clifford's seminal

In other words, stated more simply and less "ethnographically," we Native peoples of this hemisphere are still here, and our culture, always a dynamic phenomenon, continues to develop and evolve in significant and important ways.

The second principle goes to the intrinsic

validity of that cultural experience or, to state the point another way, its equality w ith the cultural experiences of anyone else - Native peoples as the "we" instead of the forever "other." As Brian Durrans stated in his recent article entitled "The Future of the Other: Changing Culture on Display in Enthnographic Museums," which appeared in The Mus eum Time-

Machine: Putting Cultures on Display: Every contemporary community, whatever its way of life, and whether dominant or dominated, inherits a stake in the whole of human evolution. Whether fractured or continuous, exclusive or interwoven with that of other groups, the past development of all surviving societies has the same time-depth. Within that time, their responses to different cultual and environmental opportunities are as interesting for their unique qualities as for what they share in common.

This does not mean that they meet the needs of their members equally well or are equally prepared to cope with current and future pressures; but it does mean they cannot be evaluated according to the idea of intrinsic "primitiveness."

The converse of this proposition is, of course, a rejection of that Euroamerican cultural precept- namely, America as a cultural "melting pot." As applied to the Native peoples of this hemisphere, the concept is historically inaccurate to begin with.

If American history demonstrates anything, it is that Indian culture has not "melted"- even in the face of great "heat."

The final principle flows, in my own mind, quite logically from the first two. It is simply this: that our representation and interpretation of Native culture must be through multiple eyes and multiple voices, including, most emphatically, the eyes and voices of Natives themselves. I always have been puzzled that, although this proposition has seemed to me to be almost tautological, acting on it did not occur at all in museums for almost a century and even now occurs only sporadically.

These principles translate directly into a programmatic structure and vocabulary that already shape and mold our nascent program planning process at the National Museum of the American Indian, and I would like to discuss them briefly. First, we must approach, as our museum community rarely has before, the representation and interpretation of Native culture in the first person rather than the third-person voice. I want to expand the circle of "inclusion" for purposes of cultural commentary and interpretation.

In making this statement I also want to be very clear about what I am not suggesting. I have no desire to exclude entirely the third-person voice that to date largely has dominated interpretations of Native culture. I do not seek the imposition of a new "exclusivity" to replace the old one or the creation of today's political "correctness" to replace yesterday's now discredited one. What I am making is an utterly practical and not a political point, and it is this: all of us can benefit immensely by bringing to bear on our interpretations of this splendid cultural material the voices and insights of its makers and creators.

Second, at the National Museum of the American Indian, we must be sure that all those elements that make up Native culture are represented. In addition to the valid and worthy insights of the anthropologist and the ethnologist, who, historically, have served as our principal cultural interpreters, our view of Native culture must expand to embrace the many other elements that comprise culture by anyone's definition. This more expansive approach to cultural interpretations would go a tremendous distance in eliminating our status in museums as the "dead," the "studied," and the "primitive" rather than as full, living, contemporary members of humankind.

In making this point I think almost automatically of our arts (which, for me, may be partly genetic). The Native arts, including both the visual and the performing, so clearly, beautifully, and cogently reflect and document our culture, including its dynamism, and our humanity. The National Museum of the American Indian must be sure that the arts are reflected in all that it does- music, painting, sculpture, dance, and drama - and, I would emphasize, performed by some live bodies, which leads to my third point.

We must relinquish the static, nineteenth-century Eurocentric view of Indian culture to the extent that it remains current - the bronzed noble flying across the Great Plains in full regalia. And I say that as a Cheyenne, those lords of the Plains who got tremendous mileage out of that stereotype. That snapshot, however picturesque, can be profoundly misleading to contemporary museum audiences.

Why? Because Indian culture is dynamic and not static. It is a continuum. It did not end in the nineteenth century. Its further development and evolution continue as I stand here this afternoon. The National Museum of the American Indian must represent and interpret Indian culture as the

contemporary living and breathing phenomenon that it is - from its roots in a glorious pre-European-contact past to a difficult but vital present.

Finally, the National Museum of the American Indian has a very special responsibility to the descendants of those who created the incomparable objects in its collection. The museum must reach o.ut to the Native community in service in ways that few museums have seen fit to do. Given the broad principles I have stated, we have a compelling obligation to make sure that the descendants of those who created the materials in our collection are able to draw upon the tremendous material and human resources of the museum in order to build their present-day communities and lives and to plan the viable, p.wductive future they so richly deserve.

But in making this first point I want to be very clear about a second: support of the Native community in preserving culture is not some parochial and ethnocentric political sop to the Native community to atone for past cultural sins. It is nothing less than an effort to support and sustain a vital past and present element of this nation's great cultural diversity for the benefit of all of us, Native and non-Native alike. If that objective cannot be considered a legitimate aspiration of this national institution of culture, the National Museum of the American Indian, then I cannot imagine what should be.

So what does all of this mean for the museum and Native communities? For the museum community I believe that the National Museum of the American Indian, at least with respect to cultural institutions of its size and impact, will represent a sea change in the way museum business is done and the manner in which we relate to our various audiences and constituencies.

And I have little doubt that, because we are the Smithsonian, we will have a substantial reinforcing effect on the winds of change that already are blowing throughout the museum community.

But I hasten to emphasize that this is not a development to be viewed with fear or consternation by the museum community.

Notwithstanding some of the pyrotechnic rhetoric to the contrary, and speaking as a Native, I know that the Native community has no intention whatsoever of embarking on some kind of mindless dissipation of this nation's great collections of Native materials. We must recognize, however, that Native culture still exists and that certain kinds of materials, most specifically sacred and ceremonial objects, are essential to the continued existence and cultural prosperity of this segment of our national

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cultural life. This support of Native culture, however, also ultimately benefits non-Natives, since Native culture has so much to say and contribute to the knowledge and lives of non-Natives through cultural institutions such as museums.

To the Native community I say this: I believe that we have reached a watershed in our long-standing love-hate relationship with the museum community, and I strongly suggest that we rethink and reorder our future relationship with that community. Speaking frankly, we need to recognize that not all museum officials, including those "A" word folks, the anthropologists and archaeologists, are direct descendants of Lucifer and that crossing the portal of a museum need not always be viewed as hopping the boat for a cruise across the River Styx. Given some of the very fundamental changes I see occurring in the museum community, I think that our reception there is very likely to be different in the future. Without getting too swept away, I do not even rule out that it will be a very warm and hospitable reception.

And tha t could mean immense and immensely exciting developments for Native peoples. The collaborations and areas of cooperation are almost limitless in programming, training, and research. We not only have the opportunity for preserving our own culture, but also for adding our voices to the chorus of interpretation and representation of ourselves to others who do not know us or appreciate the cultural contributions we have made.

Notwithstanding the occasional honest dissonant note, I feel passionately that the

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addition of our voices to this chorus will produce harmonies of which museums have not yet even dreamed.

I also see in all of this significant possibilities for reconciliation - cultural reconciliation in this case. The reconciliation of Native peoples with their often troubled and tortured past, seeing in that past, for perhaps the first time, the cultural grounding and elements of tradition that prepare us for a more hopeful and prosperous future. The reconciliation of Natives and non-Natives that flows almost naturally and inevitably from a profoundly deeper and broader understanding of Native peoples and their tremendous cultural contributions.

I was reflecting recently on a passage in the first draft of a future paper or speech that my Deputy Director for Public Program Planning, Elaine Gurian, had given me to read. It perhaps even grew out of the many philosophical conversations I have had with Elaine concerning the place of the National Museum of the American Indian in the grand sweep of the evolution of museums. In this particular case Elaine was talking about that "R" word again, repatriation, and this is what she said: [T]he American Indian claims - in their persistence and in their assertion and reliance on [the] creation and prosecution of law- have been the most visible catalysts for the current industry-wide reappraisal of museums as social institutions.

For this pressure, all of us, even in our most fearful and anxious states, should be grateful.

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We will, I believe, learn more about museum possibilities in the next decade, thanks to the American Indian community, than we have learned in the previous several. And museums will become different in a way that will, in the fu ture, seem logical and self-evident. I predict we will not be able to recreate what all the fuss was about.

I believe that Elaine is precisely correct.

From a range that is so close to the events of which she speaks, it may be difficult for some here today to agree that "we will not be able to recreate what all the fuss was about." From the longer view, however, I have a confidence which approaches the serene that her prediction w ill prove absolutely prescient. And it is that long view which the National Museum of the American Indian, by history and perhaps destiny, is constrained to take. For us it is not an option. To the contrary, it is nothing less than a cultural imperative.

About the Author: W. Richard West, Jr., is the Founding Director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, a national institution of living culture devoted to the representation and interpretation, past, present, and future, of the indigenous cultures and peoples of the Western Hemisphere, including art, history, and language. A graduate of the Stanford University Law School, he is a member of several state Bars, Bar of the United States Supreme Court, and the American Indian Bar Association. Mr. West is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.

MEMBERSHIP

ive members of your family and your friends a gift that reflects your love for Nantucket. A membership in the Nantucket Historical Association includes unlimited free admissions to our museums and historic houses, free admission to our lecture series, unlimited use of the Research Center, invitations to special events, a subscription to Historic Nantucket, and ten percent off the regular price for all purchases from the Museum Shop.

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A gift membership may be purchased from the Museum Shop, our administrative offices at 2 Whalers Lane, or by telephoning (508)228-1894. We will send a special card announcing your gift along with membership cards, the NHA decal, a copy of the current issue of Historic Nantucket, and a copy of Historic Nantucket's special Centennial Issue.

The various categories of NHA membership are: Individual Family

$ 30 50

Sustaining Contributor

$100 250

Hadwen Circle Thomas Macy Associate

Memberships are renewable annually in April and are tax deductible to the extent provided by law. Gift Memberships purchased through this offer will be renewable in April, 1997.

For further information, please contact Maia Gaillard at (508)228-1894.

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$500 1,000

The Whipping Post Nathaniel Philbrick

n a summer night at the end of the she was a girl, long before the Revolution, writing desk and this four-year-old child nineteenth century, Eliza Mitchell sat when there were two tribes on the island: preparing for bed on a cool autumn night in the gloom of her empty house with a one to the west "toward Madaket," the in the 1730s.

As the girl and her older ren, a child's composition brothers and sisters buok, and a terrifying story changed into their night to tell: how completely, how clothes and tightened utterly N antucket had their beds, there was a changed. The whalemen sound at the front door. It were gone. The Quakers was their father. He was were gone. And, of course, clearly agitated and yet the Indians were gone. was trying desperately to The Indians. It surprised remain calm, armouncing ht 1 how she kept coming that mother "need not back to them in this book of retire or undress the chilrf'miniscences begun just dren." When asked why, pnor to her eighty-eigh th he simply said that "there birthday, on February 22, was trouble brewing lSqs. On one page she pastwith the Indians." But all ed a da guerreotype of of them, especially her Durcas Honorable, who brothers and sisters, a long with Abram Quary demanded to know had the distinction of being more. Reluctantly, her one of Nantucket's "last father explained: The day Indians," and wrote: "6 feet before, an Indian had tall, a noble woman of her come into town and tribe, always kept aloof from "carefully, though very bad company, lived to be privately" told of a secret over eighty." plot by the two tribes to She al so wrote abou t attack the English settleZaccheus Macy, one of the ment and take over the English people who offered island. Even though the assistance during the almost character of the Indian biblica l plague of 1763-4 informant was somewhat tha t, in Eliza ' s words, suspect, the town officials "swept away nearly all of were inclined to take the them, and not a white perwarning seriously. When son had the least touch of you lived on an island it." Then there was the story that was a three-hour sail of the whipping post. from the mainland (in She first heard it when ideal conditions), you she was only eight years old.

Dorcas Honorable, 1776-1855 were not about to dismiss That was during the War of One of Nantucket's "last Indians " even the wildest rumor.

1812, a difficult time on Word went out to all the men that they Nantucket since a British gunboat kept other to the east ''beyond Gibbs Pond."

Then the old woman recounted the inci- would be divided into several companies: mainland supp lies from reaching the island. She was playing at a friend's house dent from her childhood that Eliza would some would stay in town to protect the when an old woman (almost the same age never forget: the last time the town's whip- women and children in case the attack materialized; other groups would head out as Eliza was in 1895) stopped by for a visit ping post had been used.

She had been younger than Eliza at the to the various Indian villages in an attempt with her friend's mother. Someone made mention of the Indians and "how few there time, five, maybe four years old. Given to discover if, in fact, an uprising was in the were now living" on Nantucket -less than Eliza's estimate of the old woman's age, works. In the meantime, it had been half a dozen. This prompted the old this would have put more than one-hun- "thought best not to inform their families woman to recall how it used to be when dred and sixty years between Eliza at her until the last minute."

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But now the truth was out, and accord- do with it, the whipping post was "soon ing to the old woman, there were "many removed," making this the last public fears and some tears." Borrowing a page whipping on Nantucket.

Later, on other nights, Eliza wrote from the frontier towns in the western half of the colonies, the Nantucketers decided down a few more stories, but none had the to consolidate the women and children urgency of the tale of the whipping post. into a few, easily defended houses, and so She would live to see her eighty-ninth "the families gathered their little ones close birthday, but just barely, dying the day around them, club'd together, well as they could." The old woman remembered laying her head upon her mother's lap, and gradually falling to sleep, "as children will."

It was time for the men to search the darkness for Indian war parties. All night they patrolled the treeless moors in the swirling mist, their eyes and ears straining for some indication of the Indian bands their imaginations inevitably placed behind every rise of land and within every hollow.

But by daybreak they had found nothing. Exhausted, they returned to town and made their report.

The next day, the town's sheriff and "fifty well-armed men" set out to determine, if possible, the "meaning of it all."

Instead of finding the Indians in the midst of a war dance, "they found all quiet." It was harvest time, and the Indians were "merrily husking their corn."

When they learned about the white people's fears, the natives were deeply di s turbed and demanded to know who had Another of Nantu cket's "last Indians " Abrnm Quan; told them this false story.

As it turned out, the informant had spent the last three days in a after on February 23, 1896, "Deeply drunken stupor, having used the money beloved and mourned," according to a the English had paid him to purchase rum. postscript written on the last page of the According to the old woman, the Indians notebook "by her sons." were "so highly incensed [that] they came Like any good story, the tale of the near tearing him apart." Eventually it was whipping post raises more questions than decided that he would receive no less than it answers. Its portrayal of a biracial microthirty lashes (the limit allowed by colonial cosm on the brink seems to contradict the law) at the town's whipping post. findings of several modem-day researchWhen it came time to inflict the punish- ers, one of whom insists that Native white ment, a large crowd had gathered in front relations on Nantucket were "among the of the town hall at the bend in the sandy best in America." highway that is now known as Main Street.

Historians quite rightly dis trust anecPassions had cooled somewhat, so it was dotes such as Eliza's. The requirements of agreed to reduce the number of lashes. narrative and the fuzziness of memory Still, the old woman remembered, "it often distort the facts to the point that the was all brutal enough," and afterwards the event described has little to do with the Indian informant was "proclaimed an out- event as lived. Yet, when the facts are few cast among his people." Whether or not a and far between, tradition may be all we collective sense of shame had anything to have to go on.

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Although he was a generation younger than Eliza's source, Obed Macy, author of the island's first history, h ad heard the same story. In a paragraph in his History of Nantucket (1835) that has been almost completely ignored in the twentieth century, Macy describes a rumored Indian "conspiracy" that corresponds closely to Eliza's account. According to Macy there had been a long-standing claim on the part of the Indians that the English had "unfairly purchased their lands," and that at some point, well before the incident described by Eliza, the Indians "became so bold as to threaten the English with total extermination, if they refused any longer to listen to their complaints." Rather than an isolated incident, the possibility of an Indian uprising had been threa ten ing for quite sometime.

Macy p rovides only the briefest account of Eliza's story and makes no mention of the drunken Indian informant and the whipping p ost. He also offers no date for the incident.

But in two different Boston newspaper s from early October 1738 (which corresponds almost exactly wi th Eliza's time frame), are reports that on Nantucket Island an Indian friendly to the English had disclosed a plot to attack and bum the white settlement.

Although there had been no 1772- 1854 bloodshed, the accounts make it clear that fears remained highnot only on the island but also among its whaling fleet since the typical crew of thirteen men contained between four and eight Indians.

Whether it's Eliza's traditional account, Obed Macy's quasi-historical reference, or the stories from the newspapers, one thing remains clear: white people on Nantucket in 1738 were not entirely comfortable w ith their Native American neighbors. Absent from these three accounts is the Indians' perspective of the incident, making it difficult to determine whether it was a case of unfounded hysteria on the part of the English or whether a native uprising was not entirely out of the question.

In the end it all comes down to a story.

Even with confirmation from several other sources, we are ultimately left with an anecdote, like a flickering candle, passed from an old woman to a child who in tum

grew old, wrote it down, and passed it on to us. Historians who dismiss such a story do so at their peril.

The old woman was not Eliza's only source of information. Elsewhere in her notebook she wro te of the man from whom she learned most of what she knew about Nantucket's past. His name was Benjamin Franklin Folger, and he lived alone in a Quary-like shack in the fishing village of Siasconset on the eastern end of the island.

Eliza began visiting Folger when she was twelve years old. Folger (who confirmed the old woman's tale of the whipping post) had an encyclopedic knowledge of the island. He knew the Indian traditions, the English traditions; he was also a genealogist who could recite a person's family tree from memory. Although he wrote a handful of articles for the local paper (including a story about Abram Quary soon after the Indian's death), Folger had an ingrained aversion to the written word. Eliza remembered, "[H]e never seemed willing to give me an opportunity to write any [of his stories] down.

But simply said, 'Your memory is good enough, and you'll remember, because you cannot forge t.' And so he would, when all was just right, tell me stories of the past."

Instead of the eccentricity of an old man, Folger's almost reverent insistence on the spoken word was part of a truly ancient tradition on Nantucket. Long before the arrival of the English settlers, the island's Native Americans had been relying on oral tradition to preserve their

heritage and culture. Instead of a hodgepodge of scattered memories, these traditions were part of a rigorously recorded body of knowledge. In several seventeenth-century deeds on Nantucket, in which the English provided a translation of a Native American account, we find references to gatherings of "great men" during which much of the business of the island was transacted and subsequently remembered: "old tahtahcummamuck he Saith thare was a great metting and ... they ware in the house and they went out to Smock it and when those great men come in again they said that they did put into the hands of Cuscuttogens father (Pocomo and Shawkemo) .... "

During treaty negotiations in Pennsylvania, Folger's namesake, Benjamin Franklin (whose grandfather, Peter Folger, happened to be Nantucket's first Indian interpreter) was witness to the kinds of gatherings described in the Nantucket deed. Although from a different area and time, the account provides a fascinating glimpse into the workings of Native American oral tradition: The old men sit in the foremost ranks, the warriors in the next, and the women and the children in the hindmost. The business of the women is to take exact notice of what passes, imprint it in their memories, for they have no writing, and communicate it to their children. They are the records of the council, and they preserve tradition of the stipulations in

treaties a hundred years back, which when we compare them with our writings, we always find exact.

The scene described here is not all that different from the one Eliza recounted in her notebook: of an old man telling a young girl stories and insisting that she "cannot forget."

Land and treaty negotiations were not the only subjects preserved by Native American oral tradition. In the case of Nantucket, a surprising number of myths and legends specific to the island have survived. A central figure in many of these tales is the mythic giant Maushop, who is credited with creating Nantucket.

Maushop appears in many guises: as an avuncular builder and as a haunted destroyer. He also changes over time.

Legends recorded in the eighteenth century differ radically from those told by Wampanoags from Mashpee and Gay Head in the twentieth century. Yet, when all these tales are taken together, a plot line begins to emerge, leaving us with, as in the case of Eliza and the whipping post, a terrifying story to tell....

About the Author: Island historian Nathaniel Philbrick is scholar-in-residence at the Coffin School and author of Away Off Shore, Nantucket Island and Its People 1602-1890. He has kindly given us permission to publish this excerpt from his bookin-progress Through Abram's Eyes: The Native American Legacy of Nantucket Island.

Horseshoe House

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ne of Nantucket's better known "trademark" landmarks is the Jethro Coffin House, also known as the Oldest House or the Horseshoe House. The embellishment on the chimney that prompts the latter name continues to be the source of constant questions. One solution to the invariable speculation is found in A Dictionary of Superstitions, edited by Iona Opie and Moira Tatem. That volume states that a horseshoe hung with the opening at the top is said to bring good luck, while the reverse position gives protection to the owner.

The horseshoe on the Jethro Coffin House chimney may well have been intended to offer protection to the house and its occupants.

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LIVING HISTORY for CHILDREN Ever wonder what it was like to live on Nantucket in the past?

The Nantucket Historical Association is pleased to offer hands-on activities based on island life during the 18th and 19th centuries.

PROGRAMS: (from July 4th Weekend through Labor Day Weekend) Tuesdays: 1HE WHALE FISHERY

Learn the skills necessary to sign on for a whaling voyage. Children will "learn the ropes" by creating a knot board, and see how the whale was captured and processed by the Nantucket whalemen.

Wednesdays: COLONIAL LIFE

Children will begin at the Old Mill where they will help the miller grind com. They will then walk to the Oldest House where they will bake bread on the open hearth and explore colonial life.

Fridays: WHALING LORE

Children will follow the voyages of the Nantucket whalemen as they travel round the world. Each child will make a sailor's valentine, a popular maritime souvenir of the 19th century.

Each program is offered as a two-hour session twice a day at 10 A .M. and 2 P.M. Space in each session is limited to 10 children, aged 6--10. Reservations are required. $15 per child; $12 for children of NHA members.

For more information, call (508) 228-1894, Monday- Friday, 9 A.M.- 4 P.M.

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ITEMS OF INTEREST The FolgerFranklin Memorial ravelers along the Madaket Road are familiar with the granite monument located on the north side of the road about halfway between Caton Circle and Eel Point Roa d. This historic marker, the Abiah Folger Franklin Memorial Fountain, was erected in 1900 near the site of Abiah's birthplace and presented to the Town of Nantu cket by th e local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

The bronze tablet that explains the gift was donated by the Co mmonwealth of Massachusetts in honor of this Nantucket woman, the moth er of Benjamin Franklin.

Not as familiar to the casual passerby is the Folger-Franklin Seat and Memorial Boulder, located atop a small knoll in the field to the north of the fountain, approximately where Peter Folger built his house. Placed there in 1959 as part of the three hundredth anniversary of the first settlement of the island, the memorial was planned and constructed by a group of island craftsmen. Now, after nearly forty years' exposure to the elements, the white oak planks from which the bench was made have deteriorated .

The bench has becom e unsafe and the inscriptions on it are almost illegible.

The NHA's curator of structures, Rick Morcom, has volunteered to construct a duplicate of the existing bench, following Alexander E. Hoyle's original design and using mahogany planking, which is more weather resistant than oak. These materials have been generously donated to the project by Mr. Michael Egan, whose property abuts the site of the memorial.

Except for occasional references to her in books and some of Benjamin Franklin's correspondence, very little is known about Abi ah Folger Franklin. She was the youngest daughter of Peter Folger, a man of great ability in many different fields who served for almost twenty years as general agent and overseer for Thomas Mayhew on Martha's Vineyard. He was invited to come to Nantucket by Tristram Coffin and the other original settlers to join with them and was given a share of Nantucket land. In 1664 Peter Folger came to Nantucket with his family and built a

r

Rendering of FolgerFranklin Memorial by its designer, Alexander E. Hoyle.

The existing memorial is shown at left.

Rick Morcom, NHA curator of stntctures, is hard at work hand-carving the bench's replacement.

house in a field nearby the present site of the memorial fountain. Abiah was born in that house in 1667, and it was there that, in 1689, she married widower Josiah Franklin, a ship chandler and soap maker.

She went to live with him and his seven children on Milk Street in Boston, where Benjamin, the youngest of her six children, was born in 1706.

He was very fond of his mother and visited her as often as his busy schedule permitted . Many of the letters from Franklin to his mother and to his sister Jane include deeply affectionate references to Abiah. From those letters we learn that she saw to it that her children had sound religious training and a good education.

She taught them to read at an early age.

Little more is known of the life of Abiah Folger Franklin. No portrait of her has ever been identified, nor has any contemporary description of her come to light.

But it is assumed, by Nantucketers at least, that the talents that distingui sh ed her famous son were "Folger traits" inherited

from Peter Folger through his d aughter Abiah.

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THE MUSEUM SHOP

hile the Northeast is shoveling out from under the blizzards of '96, the Museum Shop is preparing for the coming spring thaw. Although we will be closed until April's Daffodil Festival, we are busy behind the scenes getting ready to reopen. There are craft shows to visit, artisans to work with, and new items to be selected for the 1996 summer season. A fresh coat of paint on the walls and floor and a new floor plan combine to make the Museum Shop an even more attractive place to visit, browse, and enjoy our special collection of furniture, accessories, toys, and exclusive Nantucket souvenirs.

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See you in the spring!

The Museum Shop Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Reproductions and Adaptations Featuring Fine China, Furniture, Brass, and Silver Adjacent to the Whaling Museum, Nantucket

(508) 228-5785

Members of the Historical Association are entitled to a 10% discount upon presenting their membership card.