front and battlefield contributions during world war ii, through the stories of hall of famer ted williams and others, they give insight into the athlete's training, combat experience and reception when they returned home. and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span3. darius coombs, wampanoag and eastland wood lands director, discusses the culture of the wampanoag people who lived in the area prior to the pilgrims. he describes how they adapted to the presence of the english and how the remaining members, including him, live today. the nantucket historical association hosted this event and provided the video. [ speaking foreign language ]

>> somebody responded. that means good morning, friends, in our language. that means good morning, friends. how are you doing today? good morning, richard. i'm darius coombs. i'm wampanoag with ties to here. my area have been around this area in massachusetts from around 12,000 years, as you heard from the last speaker, right, and we're still here today. now what i'm going to do today is wampanoag is a culture of people. one out of over 1,000 indigenous cultures going across new york america. what makes workplace different from the other thousand, it could be language, that's climate, it could be diet, the house we lived in but what common one we have is how we think about life in general.

be it human life, plant life, human life, we don't put ourselves above or below that. that's one thing we have a lot in common. i do a lot of teaching, right, and i ask the people, what race do we come from? the human race, right. so we should all respect each other and that's rule of thumb for my people. so like i said, we have been here 12,000 years. that's me up there, my lovely wife tootie who teaches language, right next to me holding a tricky feather mantel. what i'm going to do, guys, is bring you to a year, 1613, before any major interruption in our culture, okay? i'm going to bring you to our new year's. you think about our new year's, right, a lot of people's new year starts january 1. our new year starts when everything comes to life. think about it, when does everything come to life? >> spring. >> spring time, right?

that's when the birds start chirping, that's when the oak leafs come out, that's when the herons start the run, that makes sense. everything is new again. every year it can be a day or so different but every year we thank mother earth for creating another year because it's not guaranteed. and we do a lot of dancing, we do a lot of feasting, we do a lot of socializing. but once that happens, we know we've got to get to work, right? and these are the type of houses we live in the summertime, spring and summer. this is a sprim and summer mat covered wetu. we live here because we needed our space for planting. leaves -- these reeds right here are cat tails. cat tails are a water plant and me being on the plymouth plantation as long as richard, we've been doing this for years and everything we do at the museum, we do ourselves so we go out and gather cat tails in late august, early september, and make these mats in the winter for our houses.

the mats will last maybe three to five years. they're waterproof. they have a cup to it so it acts like a natural funnel. and these houses would hold one family. it's different from a european family, right, back then. european family is husband, wife, kids. our family has husband, wife, kids, aunts, grandparents. you're looking at three or four generation side in one house. that's one big thing that was different. we would have englishmen come into our houses and say, this guy has five wives. maybe, but maybe not. then again not realizing what they're looking at possibly. what they're looking at is sisters, grandmothers, aunts. so that's what my job is, look at the primary sources and break it down, what it means for the wampanoag people indigenous cultures.

so those are the houses we live in over the summer. what we do during the summer, this is our planting field, right? everybody loves corn, beans and squash, right? we call them the three sisters. who takes care of the field are the women. the women are considered to be the givers of life. so they also give life to mother earth. you look at the planting field, right, it has a mound. i don't know if you can see the mound, but the women do a mound first of dirt and that's symbolic to a woman's stomach when she gives life. now when do you plant corn? you have to wait for different signs of nature. once the chad bush starts to bloom and herring starts to run, you wait until the next new moon. the reason you do it on the new moon, the new moon draws gravity up so it helps that plant grow. you plant corn. corn takes night traa jen out off the ground. you plant your means right next to it and the beans will add

nitrogen back in the ground and add stalk to the corn. what are you doing on the bottom? you play with watermelons, squashes, pumpkins and they have large leaves and will keep the ground soft. native vegetables for us native people were probably half of the diet and probably for us less seafood. but the wampanoag, going past boston, people sayhmxe':z glouc farr west, worcester, nantucket, martha's vineyard, ken abunk. let me mention names to you because back then we had over 70 wampanoag communities. nantucket sound familiar? man poisette? .cassette, sea conk, nashby,

nauset, these are places and town names but they've always been wampanoag communities. and at one time we numbered over 100,000. today is about 12,000 and we'll get into that a little bit later. that's a planting field. so what is next? we know the mom takes care of the field. they're considered the givers of life. what do the kids do during the spring and summer, tashama? tash is my daughter right there, guys, one of my daughters. and this is her in this picture when she was 11 years old, maybe 10. that's her youngest sister storm with her. and what she's doing is picking sumac. you pick those berries, boil them up and that has three times as much vitamin c as orange juice does. kids were allowed to be kids, they helped out a little bit but they had fun, they went swimming, they had running

races, they joked around. and a person could go through four, five different names in a life span, right? as you would change out of a person, the names would change to fit how you are. you want to take the names yourselves, we still had methods in our community that gives us names depending on how we are. let's talk about tashama, what does that mean? tashama means one who lifts up. it's not because she's physically strong and all of that, but tashama wakes up in a good mood almost every single day. when she wakes up in a good mood, she raises the house so everybody feels good. so you give the name depending on the person. but kids are given more responsibility as they matured. this is me, my lovely wife trudy. we did a lot of fishing back then. still do today. it's still a big part of the culture. we saw a lot of men go ocean

fishing, fresh water fishing. a lot of men would get shellfish like clams, mussels, crabs. the biggest fish we would go for, i'm not sure if it was found around here or ever was here, but a large part of wampanoag country, any idea what the biggest fish was that would go in the rivers and ocean back and forth? 20, 30 feet in length sometimes? somebody said it i think. sturgeon. >> sturgeon. >> sturgeon. and sturgeon, they're big fish, right? we go fishing for these fish at nighttimes in our boats with what we call mashun. we had from a nine-foot one-man boat to boats big enough to carry 40 men. we have three different recordings of europeans seeing 40-man boats being sailed up in the nantucket island. not paddled, sailed.

which we paddled too, which we pulled along the shore, but when we went for the sturgeon, right, we went out at the nighttime. we would have torched at the end of our boats. the light was to attract the sturgeon up and they would flip over on their belly, and we would spear them. a lot of times the fish got bigger than the boat and you couldn't fit the fish in the boat so drag it to shore. and there was other fish, so mu flounder you walked on the beach, and so much fish, that's why they call it cape cod. lobster, not a big deal. we used lobster for fishing bait. times would change, right? we had so much lobster, you got to pick them at low tide at the beach. i'm not saying we didn't eat lobster, but it was common. you go to 100 years ago and lobster was fed to prisoners every single day. the prisoners had a big

uprising, gee, we're sick of this. we don't want no more. a law was made in massachusetts so you could only feed lobster to the prisoners twice a week. if you did it more than that, it was considered to be inhumane. right? back in 1623, governor bradford, right, had a ship come in, he was so embarrassed, he said i'm very sorry, this is all we have is lobster to give you guys. a lot different today. takes on different meaning. and we did a lot of fishing during the summer. the men were taken as takers of life, which is different from the women who give life. that's why we do the majority of the fishing. after harvest time, we think about going inland. we want to go inland a little bit away from the ocean. i know it's hard to do in nantucket. i'm sure you try to find shelter around the woodsy area and get protection from the ocean. inland might be a half mile, maybe a mile. and these are the houses we live in. we've heard the names before,

long houses. they're bark-covered houses and normally during the winter, these houses can be anywhere from 100 feet long to one of the biggest houses we found -- we found footprint of this house, it was probably a meeting house, a structure like this, this footprint was found out in worcester. the foot print on this bark house is 320 foot in length and 60 foot in width. i tell kids, if you don't know what that means, think of a football field. that's how big this house was. the frames were made out of cedar. the outside bark normally would have been chestnut and elm. we don't have those trees around here anymore, so we use two and we used to use white ash. unfortunately you have bugs wiping out those trees. we'll talk about that in a minute. the men did the hunting.

like i said, men were said to be the takers of life and we hunt for the deer, big game. there was so much deer around here at one time. on the mainland we go for elk, bear, big game. small many animal, you like the taste of skunk? anybody? good answer, never tried it. skunk is considered to be a wampanoag delicacy. how do you catch a skunk? very carefully, right? you get two boys, one boy will be in front of the skunk distracting him. hey, skunky, right? you get another boy sneak from behind and grab his tail and lift him off the ground. in order for a skunk to spray, he has to be on all fours, pressure on his hind legs to release the sfifrpgt glands. you get up in the air, you can't do that. you have a club, you bang them over the head and you very carefully cut them open and take

the stink glands out. i say carefully because if you puncture the stink glands, you might not be welcomed in the community for a while. i heard recently though, i haven't tried it, some elders say you take the gland of the skunk and break it open and you rub it on your arthritis, and it works. i don't have arthritis yet. they don't sell it in drug stores yet either, so -- and what we do in the winter, the women do a lot of weaving. we're known for our weaving, the wampanoag people. some of our weavers are the best in the world and some of their work is at the smithsonian in washington, d.c. there's a woman named, wildhorse haney, a friend of mine, a wampanoag, and her work is in the smithsonian in d.c. how do we make string? a lot of guys say you guys had string? how did we make string? we used milkweed, we used tree

stalks. we take the stalks, after they're dead, put it on the ground and open it up, take the inner fibers out and work it together. when they came in 1620 they noticed wampanoag women making string so fast that their eyes con the keep up with. then we dye, different types of berries and roots for coloring. we had small bags that you see here and large bushel bags to store dried vegetables so we would have food during the winter. now this right here is the interior of a house. that is actually all of my daughters there. three out of four. i got four daughters and no boys, yeah. so that's the oldest daughter sitting down. her name is talia. the two sitting on the ground, tashama and storm. i want to break out for a second. i want to tell you where these pictures come from.

we work with scholastic quite a bit over the years and in 2016, they came to plymouth plantations, can we make a video and put this video across every third grade class in the united states? we said sure. we set up the script. richard and i worked on it quite a bit. he did the cornual flag and i did the wampanoag flag. we showed how wampanoag and colonial kids lived back then, back in 1974 and what they do today. shows tashama and storm riding their bikes, plague in the playgroun playing like they did today. and that's what what people relate to. they think we're gone. just because we're in different times, we still do it. we're still here. and this goes every classroom across the united states. sometimes when i walk in the third grade classes they're playing a video, it's called the wampanoag wave. you can google it. i play the father in it. i'm dressed up in 17th centuries

skins. when i walk into the one classroom, i see a boy watching the video on the screen, he sees me walking in. [ laughter ] he said, yeah, you're storm's dad. yeah, i know. so surreal emoment. inside these houses we had bedding, we don't sleep on the ground, we had furs on the beds, mats on the beds. these houses are big, round shaped, get really warm too. rule of thumb when you're making these houses, i do quite a bit of these houses myself, i build them, every ten feet or so you want a fire pitt on the signed and that's just to keep you warm in the winter. it is a round shape. you can't really see on the walls but we have bull rush mats on the walls, which you have bark, interior frame, and then you have your maps. two layers of bull rush mats.

you have one full mat and because the way the house is shaped like a dome shape, heat will rise, go up. force the cold air out into the middle and that keeps the warm air circulating in circles. when the europeans got here and went in our houses, they said the houses were so warm during the winter they saw native children running outside in the winter and jumping out into the snow. so they get quite warm. so we lived like that for thousands of years, guys. we went through that cycle, the ocean. no need for the winter, so why not gather back together and be more communal? in the winter community during the winter, we would go from 300 to 3,000 people from disease hit. that was before any major interruption, all right. that is a 13-moon cycle real quick.

that's called lap 1613. one thing i want to say really quick, you heard the term luck survival for native people. how did you guys survive back then? well, we've been doing this 12,000 years. you just don't roll over in bed one morning, oh, geez, where am i going to get food today? there's a system already set up, generations long before, that people knew how to hunt and fish. so like i said, we call that 1613. let's move to 1614. there was trading going on. first european traders that were here recorded back in 1524 with var sano. the trade started blooming early 1600s. you heard some names. and back in 1614 though, guys, when trading happened, when english wanted and french and

dutch were a lot of otter pelts and beaver pelts which they made their hats in europe out of. but what happened in 1614, there was an english castor named thomas hunt that came down the coast. remember this day 1614, okay, he came down the coast and he went to an area which is called plymouth today. what we call pawtuxet. a thriving wampanoag community, probably over 1,000 people. that's how you described yourself back then guys. if you're traveling to pawtuxet and you went up to somebody and said hey, what are you, they wouldn't probably say wampanoag because they expect you to know this is wampanoag country. they would strike themselves in wampanoag speaking in the community they're from. i'm a pawtuxet, what are you? when thomas came to the pawtuxet, he took 19 pa tuxette as slaves.

a lot of people think african-american and think of slavery, this happened to our people too. this is six years before the pilgrims arrived here. took 19 pawtuxet, went down cape, stopped in west east ham, what we call nauset was wampanoag people, brought them to spain, sold from there and remainder sold to england. one of the guys sold to england his name was squantio. that sound familiar? you guys heard of squantio? he lived in england with a merchant named john swainy. he lived there five years. what i hear he gained some kind of status, he learned a lot about english culture, he knew how to speak english fluently over those five years. but what happened to squanto, there was a wealthy man fernando funding a lot of these trips and they were asking who is from this hear called plymouth pawtuxet? they say squanto.

where is he? he's up in newsom with captain mason. go get him. i want to do another inventor. so he sends tom determiner to pick up squanto. remind you, this is 1619, almost five years. he's picked up in newfoundland by thomas determine err. come down the coast and pick up a sagamore, chief in his own language. he knew how to speak english and a lot of the captains back then by name. and they kept going down the coast. when they were going down the coast in 1619, they saw something extremely devastating, the most devastating thing that ever happened to our people, disease.

there was an pandemic in 1618 over england. these people, they got a plague, scars over their body, and died in two, three days. wiped out the population along the coast anywhere from 70% to 90% were wiped out in two to three years. now, that plague as far as we know didn't affect a lot of people on the islands like nantucket, because it's hard for diseases to go through the water. that's why a lot of people here were protected from the plague and people actually moved out here for protection from the plague. what we know about the plague over the years, hepatitis, skin turning yellow and open sores. disease control came out something over 10 years ago, they believed it might be leapt owe sproe sis, and what that is, they believe the french trade ships coming over and they had rats on these trade ships and the fetus of the rats get into the water system and cause an

infectious liver disease. that's what the theory is now. i always say this whenever i talk, you can put whatever name on it, it doesn't matter to me. what i do know is it's the most devastating people that ever happened to our people period. so they're coming down the coast with squanto, and they come to pawtuxet and find it pretty much devastated. imagine that, squantio taken as a slave in 1614, coming back home and finds out all of his people are dead. is that going to change you as a person? i think so. they end up going over to the vineyard, right, and there was a lead ov leader over the vip yard named epinow. he was taken as a slave in 1611 over to england. he made it back now. how he made it back was in 1614, they're asking him hey, is there gold when you're at? is there gold on the island you

come from? he was a chief, he wasn't dumb. these probably thinking, yeah, there's gold. you bring me back home, i'll tell you where the gold is at. so in 1614, they brought him back home. and that's when he yelled out something in native tongue which the english did not understand. a lot of men ran to the beach and following day attacked the ship and he had a chance to jump over and swim ashore. so he made it home. he seems derma coming, another ship in 1619. he's home five years. he's thinking people might be coming to get me again. so there's another fight that breaks out, derma gets injured quite badly. squantio and samoset are somehow released, we don't know how, and they end up in mass soy. a great leader, like we said, there were 70 wampanoag leaders

and massaquoi was the biggest leader of the community located in what is called bristol warren island today. so samoset would end up there. okay. let's fast track to 1620. pilgrims arriving. they arrive in what is called -- finally settle in plymouth, what is plymouth today, december 1620. they had a really bad year that winter. a lot of people died. from what i hear, february was the deadliest month. but they were building their homes, staying on the "mayflower." they settled there because it was good water, it was cleared out already. so massaquoi two days walk away four miles west of plymouth, pfister island today, he heard about these people building homes. one thing we're used to, we're always used to people coming over -- europeans coming over here, the only thing we weren't used to people coming over and

staying, okay. that was different. what made these people different is they brought their women and children and that might have meant a friendlier type of people. still, massaquoi didn't know. he probably called over samoset, hey, samoset, come here. you know how to speak english, right? of course, yeah. go to these people and find out why people are building their homes. massaquoi was a leader. he wasn't dumb. he's thinking this guy is considered to be a sag ama cheap too but he can speak english and also he's not one of my men, so i don't know what's going to happen to him. come march 16, march 16, '21 he set into the village. considered naked, he didn't have much clothing on. you see what this guy has on now. he had on just a beach cloth. he goes in and says welcome englishmen in their own language. which they were shocked seeing a

native perp speak english native person speak english to them. he told them about the land and area and plague that just came through. he stayed in the house that evening, which in my mind is kind of different. but they carefully watched him overnight. he said you know what, i'm not from here. i'm going to bring you a leader who is. he goes back and tells massaquoiias are all right to come along. later in march massaquoi comes along and brings 60 of his men and that's when they make the famous treaty between the two people, the peace treaty, treaty of diplomacy, one needed each ear at the time. you think about it, i mentioned that plague coming down the coast, that plague stopped dead in its tracks right before the people started in the territory. any thoughts about that, why it stopped right there? we have two good spots, naraganset and wampanoag did not like each other.

for at least two generations before there was any european contact here. and you have a large body of water at the bay and, like i said, disease is hard to go over water. again, the wampanoag were depleting in numbers. one of the leaders said, well, i'll start to attack. massaquoi's community is located right on the border of nar ganszous. so before he came out and made an alliance, massaquoi did. one needed the other. hue you really felt with the english standing here, there wasn't one universal answer. you have to go from community to community. it's your brother got taken as a slave by traders prior, are you going to be happy? no. there were leaders who weren't happy but mass soy haquoi had af power. it's a piece of the treaty but basically say if you go to war, i'll help you out. if i go to war, you will help me out.

we know that lasted over five years with no major, major conflict of war. later on in 1621, that's with when squanto comes to live and stay with the columnist and he teaches them how to plant corn. that's what he's famous for, teaching them how to plant corn. like i said, he was a changed person. he liked having power and caused a lot of trouble back then. he died in 1916 too but in two years caused a lot of drama. he would run and say watch out, bradford wants to attack. and back and say the same thing. back and forth, back and forth. he actually sent his men out to plymouth with his own personal knife and wanted squanto's heads and hands delivered back to him. governor bradford's thinking, hmm, i should do this. this could be one of the first

breaks of the treaty for the states if one does something wrong to another, you have to turn that person over. all of a sudden -- massaquoi comes out with gifts, too, by the way to give governor bradford with squanto'sp head in. but at the same time the ship was coming in the water and they said governor bradford was distracted and said wait a second so the guys got frustrated and went back home. like i said, he died in 1622 and leaves steven hopkins and a few others down in chatham for a trading scenario, meet and greet, whatever. that evening when he was in one of the houses, they said squanto had a nose bleed that wouldn't stop and something called indian fever back then. there was some type of hemorrhaging going on. when he was lying on his death bed, he asked english if he would be accepted into their guards. although he might have been a changed person, he knew what he was doing. this guy right here doesn't get

much praise in the textbooks. he hobbamock, if it wasn't for this guy, history would have definitely been different today. when he made that treaty with the english in 1621, he needed somebody else -- because this village is 40 miles west. he needed an ambassadorship out here. not out here but out in plymouth colony. that's when he said hobbamock to live among the english. he lives with his family of over ten people for anywhere of 10 to 15 years of his life. he was the closest friend -- closest native the english considered to be a friend. they don't say much about his family. they say hobbamock had more than one wife. i wish i knew one of his wife's names because she plays a major role in the diplomacy. she actually reports back and forth to massaquoi and what's going on, especially with squanto, but they never give her

name. they don't say much about the family structure and we're guessing they lived in a covered home like he was used to but he kept peace between two people. he was considered to be a pen's, one who counsels on war and leads in the battle and a lot of time the english considered them indestructible. how do you become a pennous? you're chosen from childhood and have special qualities and special people choose you and from there on your raised. one of the final stages, you're given a stone knife. you would go into the woods alone for a whole winter. if you came back you would be a pen pennous, and if you didn't, you wouldn't. but he was highly respected amongst the people. he kept other people informed. he was a key role player. let's skip up a little bit here, praying town.

if you have ever been in the homeland, my homeland, this is the oldest meeting house in the united states. it was built in 1684. we heard a little bit about praying town, we know a lot of . we've learned about the king james bible and they say they knew the bible so well, they were preaching it to nonnative people. he was a chief who called him out and said what are you doing. we have our own ways of doing things. why are you teaching something different? and literally punched him in the face. but he continued to preach and he made it over here to nantucket. we know it was the first praying

town. there were two 14 of them. you had the cotton wood, you had john elliot. i want to talk about this right here. this is the son, jacoomes son. back when the praying towns were being formed, john elliot was a missionary up there, right? he was teaching the native people, and joel was one of them. caleb was another. these guys would have been the first graduating class of harvard university back in 1665. caleb graduated, joel did not. the reason he did not graduate is two weeks before graduation he went home to martha's vineyard and on the way back stopped here in nantucket and he got killed. and it was probably his own

people that did it, because christianity didn't make it over here until '59, a little later. so you had a lot of traditionalists still here. i always say about the praying indians, you don't know what they were going through unless you walk a mile in their moccasins. i never judge like that. but what harvard did back in 2011, they invited my family up there and gave us a degree in his name, which harvard rarely does. this is it right here. also, when elliot was teaching the bible to native people, back in the '50s and '60s, he felt like the native people were not picking the religion up quick enough, being the king james bible was in english. so what he did, he hired native interpreters and wrote the bible in wampanoag. i say that because there's a really good story. some of you guys might have

heard about language. back in the 1990s there was a woman from my community, a vice-chair today. she was having dreams -- this is a true story. she was having dreams and she said people were coming into her dreams speaking a different tongue. this happened night after night. she said people looked familiar from mashpee, and one of the dreams the people spoke english to her. they said if the wampanoag people had the chance to get the language back, would they say yes. so she took it monday herself, went to m.i.t. and graduated with a degree in linguistics and started piecing the language back together again. elders still could speak some of the language. old records were written in wampanoag, okay. similar language families. but what helped out a great deal was the bible, the king james bible written in wampanoag. we had one of those first

editions in our grasp today. so today we have our language back. my wife is one of the teachers of the language. we teach pre-k up to third grade and every year we add a grade to it. going back three years ago, or maybe two, the wampanoag is taught still right now in mashpee high school, it's taught as an accredited course liken g like english, french and dutch. that's a cool story because if you lose your culture, you lose part of what you are. that's your identity and we got it back. let's fast forward to war. nobody likes war. but war broke out. what i can tell you, in 1657 and 1660, that's when two of the first big leaders lost their lives. we know governor bradford lost it in '57. we know smassasoit lost it in

1660. the next generation didn't care for each other a lot. land, some people thought of ownership and the other did not think of ownership. one culture would build fences around where they lived and the other culture walked across what they would call their back yard. you can't be here no more, this is not yours anymore. that's my culture. for a native american, they're thinking what do you mean i can't be here anymore. i don't get that. land is part of what you are as a person. that was the reason, you know. and in 1675, battle broke out and it was the bloodiest per capita in new england, and a couple more years farther north, king phillip was massasoit's second son. that guy was something to reckon with. he actually heard about

nantucket, a native person talking bad about him. he took his canoe and paddled out here to confront this person. he also asked a lot of people in the islands to join the war. that war lasted about a year and it ended up with benjamin church, led by a native guide, finding king phillip. august 12th, 1676 at his home, mount hope, pokanoke. when they found him, they dismantled him, took his head off, and took his head back and put it on the post. they were thinking what are we going to do with his wife or kid. they didn't think death was right. so what happened, a lot of these people were sold as slaves. the only thing that came close is what's going on today, a lot of these people went down to

bermuda and those people still have their cultural identity. they know who they are. so we as wampanoag people go down and visit them one year and they come up and come up to mashpee. july 4th weekend, if you're around, come see us. it's kind of cool. we'll go forward to what happened here. now, there's a large population of 400 or so people over here on nantucket and there's a vaccine given to the native people in 1763, 1764, that wiped out two-thirds of the population of people. you heard gino bryant's story a little bit earlier and that's true. what happened to these people afterwards? a lot of people were isolated by themselves after. a lot of people might have took off to mashpee or martha's

vineyard, so they were spread out. you hear about the last indians and that's from a personal lens, you know. a lot of people say if it's not recorded, it's not true. and that's not true. so that happened. let's go forward, to about 1830. you guys have heard of president jackson. 1830, he wanted to remove all native people on the east coast, which he did, west of the mississippi. oklahoma was one of the states for relocation. the reason i thibring this up i the agents came around here, too, for wampanoag people. they wanted us out west to oklahoma. and there's one nonnative voice that stood up, his name being john quincy adams. he said if you bring these people out west, they're going to die. the reason they're going to die is because they rely on seafood

in their diet, and they believed him. that's why we were left alone. the last two indians of nantucket, who knows. that was some people's lens. they died within seven weeks apart. what else do we got here? this is kind of cool right here. we might be doing this next year out here, seriously. we've got a 40-foot white pine log which we're going to make a 20-man boat. this picture is from a paddle we made in 2002 to martha's

vineyard. back in the '90s, we always say, okay, we used to make paddles to nantucket and paddles to the vineyard. everything was past tense. i'm like why can't we do this again? so we had a 30-foot poplar tree donated and a 20-footer white pine that we made a mashoon out of. we all wanted to steer this boat, this big 30-foot boat, right? so we looked at each other and said, hey, let's race for it. so we took two 12-foot boats, mashoons, and went across the eel river and we saw who would make it back first. it was like speed boats. he beat me by half a boat length. he got to steer the boat. this trip took a lot of

planning. it took three years of planning. we finally made the trip, though. it involved large nations of people. we left a place called -- we left woods hole august 18th of 2002. we left 6:00 a.m. we left at high tide. we had 10 mile an hour winds to our back. we landed over tinsbury. if it was a straight shot, it would have been five miles. i gave you the elements. tell me how long it took. i'll also tell you that most experienc experienced paddlers were saying three hours. there was nobody living who would say this is how long it's going to take you. any guesses in the crowd?

an hour and a half. what happened, when we made this trip, we kind of beat the ferry. people had to take a shuttle to the ferry, take the ferry over to vineyard haven, and then take another shuttle to the beach. and we had beaten them there by a half hour. so they were telling us, we're going to have a big celebration, we're going to be out there dancing and singing when you guys arrive. even a clam bake maybe, you know. so i remember paddling in, that day when we left it was really cloudy. when we were coming in, all the fog broke and i'm paddling and i'm like, where is everybody? we weren't wearing watches, so we don't know how long it was taking us.

we saw people on the beach in bathing suits. there were eight sunbathers from nebraska there. so once we landed, because we were dressed in 17th century skins. the first thing out of their mouths, they're like do you guys do this every day? i go this hasn't been done in a couple hundred years. but like i said, we got this 40-foot boat we're going to be making and we've got a lot of things we want to do with it next year. one will have nantucket involved. we have some ideas, so stay tuned. leaping up to 1870 here, that's when a lot of communities got incorporated, mine being one, mashpee and a few others. what that meant for our people is, okay, now it's considered to be a township. so we're going to give you 25 acres of your own land, but now we're going to tax you on it. >> congratulations.

>> yeah, congratulations. so that word "incorporation" means a different term in my language. so we lost a lot of our land. fast forward through the 1900s, cape cod became cape cod, a tourist attraction. where i live, mashpee, nobody really moved to mashpee, not only probably the '90s. mashpee was the fastest developing town in massachusetts in the '90s. and today -- let me go back. today we have our -- we just got fully recognized by the u.s. government back in 2007 as a people, okay. and what we do today, we have health services, we have programs for housing, health, education. we do our powwow, which is july 4th weekend. this right here is a special dance we did this past powwow.

this is a lot of my family. we did it for my brother who passed away back in '97. he got killed down in rhode island. his name was melvin coombs. we danced for him. i want to show you something. i haven't visited here in eight or ten years, but my daughter and myself, we went out to the cemetery up the road where my family is buried, a lot of my family. my father was raised here, my aunt was raised here, my grandparents were raised here, my grandfather was. darius coombs, my grandfather, moved here. you've got my grandmother, ruth west, born 1895, passed away in

1964. she had a stillborn son in 1919. so i visited the grounds yesterday and i googled indians of nantucket and i came across a picture that i have in my living room. this is my grandmother. the nantucket historical site has it right here. there wasn't a name underneath it. i'm like that's ruth west, that's my grandmother. she passed away in 1964. yeah, i'll do more digging to see, because this is one woman that i've heard it's not mashpee, she doesn't show up in the records. i'm going to keep on digging and see what i find. any questions? that's my story, guys. [ applause ]

week nights this month we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span3. tonight we look at the cold war. historian william hitchcock discusses presidential leadership during the war and the lasting impact on politics. he's the author of "the age of eisenhower". watch tonight beginning at 8:00 eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span3. stay with c-span for our continuing coverage of the transition of power as president-elect joe biden moves closer to the presidency. with the electoral college votes cast from states across the country, join us on january 6th live at 1:00 p.m. eastern for the joint session of congress to count the votes and declare the winner for president and vice president. and finally, at noon on january 20th, the inauguration of the

46th president of the united states. our live coverage begins at 7:00 a.m. eastern from the statehouse, to congress, to the white house. watch it all live on c-span on the go at c-span.org or listen using the free c-span radio app. up next on history bookshelf, to mark the 400th anniversary of the pilgrims arrival, we'll discuss "mayflower", mr. philbrick discusses. >> my name is peggy baker. i'm the director of pilgrim hall museum and i would like to welcome you all here tonight for what is a grand occasion for all of us wh