“It’s the critical back story to the arrival of the Mayflower that is hardly ever told,” said Paula Peters, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe.
QUINCY, Mass. — With Plymouth’s 400th anniversary highly anticipated, the Wampanoag community is telling its version of what occurred during that pivotal time four centuries ago.
“It’s the critical back story to the arrival of the Mayflower that is hardly ever told,” said Paula Peters, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe and the Plymouth 400 Wampanoag Committee. “The story of Plymouth can’t be told accurately without it.”
Through the traveling exhibit “Our Story: 400 Years of Wampanoag History,” significant historical events and cultural traditions are highlighted. Its message is this: We suffered, but we have a rich culture and are still here.
“This is where our people have been for 12,000 years, and we have an active and vital culture today,” said Peters, whose tribe has about 2,800 members.
The first two of the exhibit’s seven chapters are on display at the Quincy Historical Society through Dec. 15. Each year until 2020, an additional chapter will be added, and they will circulate throughout Southeastern Massachusetts. The exhibit has been created entirely by Wampanoag people.
It starts with “Captured: 1614.” In that year — six years before the Pilgrims landed — a European explorer captured 27 Wampanoag men. They were forced onto ships to be sold as slaves in Spain. Only one man returned: Tisquantum, known as Squanto.
“Squanto was able to help the Pilgrims because he learned English after he was captured and brought to Europe,” Peters said.
To convey the impact of the loss of the 27 men, Wampanoag men and women in videos act as their 17th-century ancestors. Around a fire and wearing native clothing, a woman grieves for her future husband, a mother worries who will teach her son, a man talks of trying to rescue his tribesmen, and another describes the trading ruse that made the capture possible.
“What kind of person does this to take a man from his home when we weren’t even at war?” a woman asks.
In a video for the second chapter, “The Messenger Runner,” a Wampanoag man re-enacts the ways the far-flung tribe — whose settlements are shown on a large map — communicated. A man runs 40 miles from Mashpee to Plymouth, through woods, fields and sand, to deliver a message, the content of which lends a bit of humor to the exhibit.
There’s nothing funny in the third chapter, “The Great Dying,” which tells of how the people of Patuxet, now Plymouth, were devastated by diseases transmitted by the European explorers. This chapter is expected to be added either next month or when the exhibit travels to another location next year.
“The whole population of Patuxet either died or left, and that’s why it was empty when the Pilgrims arrived,” Peters said.
Future chapters will be titled: “Powwow,” “Governance,” “Squanto Returns,” and “National Day of Mourning.”
The exhibit is produced by SmokeSygnals, Peters’ marketing and communications firm in Mashpee, and the Indian Spiritual and Cultural Training Council Inc. in West Barnstable. It is presented by Plymouth 400 Inc., the nonprofit planning organization for events and programs commemorating the landing of the Mayflower and founding of Plymouth Colony in 1620.
When the first chapter debuted last year in Plymouth, Mashpee, Provincetown and Connecticut, Peters was prepared for criticism.
“I was waiting for a negative response from someone who didn’t want to hear this side of the story or who would question it, but I’ve heard nothing but positive feedback,” she said. “People are grateful it’s coming forward.”
IF YOU GO
What: “Our Story: 400 Years of Wampanoag History”
Where: Quincy Historical Society, 8 Adams St., Quincy
When: Through Dec. 15
Cost: Free
For information, go to Plymouth400 on Facebook.
