just mention, madison originally called it freedom of the use of the press, and it is indeed freedom to print things and publish things. it is not a freedom for what we now refer to institutionally as the press. >> lectures in history. on american history tv on c-span 3. every saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern. lectures in history is also available as a podcast. find it where you listen to podcasts. darius coombs, wampanoaq and eastern woodlands director at eastern paw tux evident, discusses the culture of the cam pa noeg people who lived in the area prior to the arrival of the pilgrims. he explains 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 ]. >> hello. >> somebody responded. >> that means good morning friends of my language. good morning friends. how are you doing today? all right, good morning, richard. i also have nantucket ties to here, right? my people have been around this area of massachusetts for over 12,000 years. and we're still here today, okay? now, what i'm going to do today is like wampanoag is a culture of people. one out of 1,000 indigenous cultures going across north america. what makes wampanoag different from the other thousand? it could be language. that's common with a lot of people too. it could be diet. it could be the housing we lived

in. one common one we all have is how we think about life in general. we respect all forms of life be it human life, plant life, animal life. we don't put ourselves above or below that. that's one thing we all have 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, you know? so like i said we've been here for 12,000 years. that's me up there with my lovely wife trudy, who teaches language. right next to me also holding the turkey feather mantle. what i'm going to do, guys, is i'm going to bring you to a year, 1913, before there's 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 new years starts january 1st, okay? our new year starts when

everything comes to life. think about, when does everything come to life? springtime, right? that's when the birds start chirping, that's when the oak leaf comes out. that's when the herring starts to run. in our new year we thank mother earth, we thank the creator for having another year because it's not guaranteed. and we do a lot of dancing, a lot of feasting. we do a lot of socializing. but once that happens we know we have to get to work, right? and these are the types of houses we live in during the summertime, okay? the spring or summer. this is a spring and summer mat covered wetube. we live in a single family home during the summer because we needed our space for planting. now these reeds right here are cattails. cattails is a water plant. and me being at plymouth plantation, same along as richard, we've been doing this for years. and everything we do at the museum we do ourselves.

so we go and gather the cattail late august, early september and we make these mats in the winter for our houses, right? the mats will last maybe 3 to 5 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 back then. european family is husband, wife, kids. our family has husband, wife, kids, aunts, grandparents. we're looking at three or four generations inside one house. and that's one big thing that was different. you know? so we would have englishmen coming to our houses and say this guy has five wives. maybe, 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 to look at these primary sources and

break it down, what it means for the wampanoag people and indigenous cultures. okay? those are the houses we live in during the summer. and what we do during the summer, now this is our planting field, right? everybody loves corn, bean and squash, right? they call them the three sisters. and who takes care of the fields are the women. the women are considered to be the givers of life, okay, so they also give life to mother earth. so 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 of dirt and that's symbolic to a woman's stomach when she gives life. okay? when do you plant corn? you have to wait for different signs of nature. once the herring start 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 corn to grow. so you plant your corn, the corn takes nitrogen out of the ground.

you plant your beans right next to it, the beans will add nitrogen back into the ground and wrap around the stock of the corn. what do you plant on the bottom? you plant your squashes, your watermelons, your pumpkins. and they have a large leaf. and they'll shade the ground to keep the ground soft. vegetables for us as native people will probably represent half to two thirds of the diet. wampanoag culture it makes up a large part of massachusetts. some people say gloucester. going as far west as worcester. nantucket, martha's vineyard. kety hunk. let me mention some names to you, right? because back then we had over 70 -- about 70 wampanoag communities. nantucket sound familiar? sies konsette? mat poisette?

co-castette? seaconch? mashby? knaussette? these are name places and town names. but they've all been wampanoag communities. at one time we numbered over 100,000. today there's about 12,000. we'll get to that a little later. so that's a planting field. and what is next -- so we know the mom takes care of the field. they're considered to be the spring of life. what do the kids do during the summer? that's my daughter right there, guys, one of my daughters. and this is her in this picture when she was 11 years old, maybe 10. and that's her youngest sister storm with her. and what she's doing is picking sumac. you pick those berries, you boil them up and that right there has three times as much as vitamin c

as orange juice does. so kids were allowed to be kids. they helped out a little bit but they had fun, they played games, they went swimming, they had running races. they joked around. and a person will go through four or five different names in a life-span. right? as you would change as a person your name would change also to fit how you are. you wouldn't take the name yourself. we still have medicine people in our community that gives us names depending how we are. let's talk about tashima. what does that mean? tashima means one who lifts up. right? it's not because she's physically strong and all that but tashima wakes up in a good mood almost every single day and when she wakes up in a good mood she raises a house so everybody feels good. so you get a name depending on the person. kids will get more responsibility as they matured. this is me and my lovely wife trudy. we did a lot of fishing back then. still do today, still a big part

of the culture. we saw a lot of young men go ocean fishing, freshwater fishing. a lot of the women would get to shellfish and crabs, mussels, crabs. the biggest fish we would go for i'm not sure if it's found around here or ever was here, but in large parts of wampanoag country, any idea what the biggest fish was that would go in the rivers and ocean back and forth? no? it's 20, 30 feet in length sometimes. somebody said it. sturgeon. and sturgeon, they're big fish, right? and we go fishing for these fish at nighttime in our boats called mashoon. we had our mashoonoshes that would range from 1 foot -- actually 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 off the nantucket island. not paddled, sailed. which we paddled, too, which we pulled along the shore. but when we went for the sturgeon we'd go out at nighttime. we'd have torches at the end of our boats. the light of the torch would attract the sturgeon up. and they'd flip over on their belly and we'd spear them. a lot of times the fish was bigger than the boat so you couldn't put the fish in the boat. so you'd drag it on the shore. you had flounder. cod they say they were so thick you could walk right across the backs of it to cape cod. okay? lobster, not a big deal. we used lobster for fishing bait. times have changed, right? we have so much lobster you'd go to low tide to pick them off the beach. i'm not saying we didn't each lobster but it was common. you go back 100 years ago and lobster was fed to prisoners in

jail up by boston, right, every single day. and the prisoners had a big uprising and they said, we're sick of this, we don't want no more. so there was a law made in massachusetts you could only feed lobster to prisoners twice a week. if you did it more than that they said it would be inhumane. right? back in 1623 governor bradford, right? he had a ship come in. he was so embarrassed. he said we're very, very sorry, this is all we have, the lobster, to give you guys. not a big deal. it takes on today a different meaning. so we did a lot of fishing during the summer. the men are considered to be takers of life. okay? and that's different from the women who give life. so that's why we do the majority of the fishing. now, after harvest time we think about going inland. we want to go inland a bit away from the ocean. i know it's hard to do in nantucket. but i'm sure you try to find more shelter around the more woodsy area. and you would get protection

from the wind, from the ocean. inland might be a half-mile, maybe a mile. and these are the houses we live in. we heard the names before, long houses. they're bark-covered houses. and normally during the winter these houses could be anywhere from 100 foot long to one of the biggest houses we found -- we found the footprint of this house, right? structured like this. this footprint was found out in worcester. the footprint of this bark-covered house was 326 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, okay? the outside bark normally would have been chestnut and elm. we don't have those trees around here anymore so, we use tube of popp lar today. and we used to use white ashe. unfortunately you have the ash bug today that's wiping out those trees.

and they're getting warm. we'll talk about that in a minute. the men did the hunting. like i said, the men are considered to be the takers of life. and we hunt for the deer, for big game. heard there was so much deer around here at one time. on the mainland we go for black bear, moose, elk also for big game. small animals, you guys like the taste of skunk? anybody? that's a good answer right there. never tried it, right? skunk is considered to be a wampanoag delicacy. how do you catch a skunk? very carefully, right? you get two boys. one boy would be in front of the skunk distracting him. you get the other boy, they'll sneak up on him from behind, grab his tail, lift him off the ground. in order for a skunk to spray, he has to be on all fours, putting pressure on his hind legs to release those stink glands.

you get him in the air, he can't do that. you have a club, you bang him over the head and very carefully cut him open and take the stink glands out. i say carefully because if you puncture the stink glands, you might not be welcome in the community for a while. i've heard recently, though -- i haven't tried it but some elders say you take that gland of the skunk and you break it open and you rub it on your arthritis, it works. i don't have arthritis yet so -- they don't sell that in drugstores yet either. and what we do a lot in the winter is the women do a lot of the weaving. okay? now, 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 down in washington, d.c. there's a woman name of comey haines, a relative of mine, wampanoag and her work is in the smithsonian down in washington, d.c. now, how do you make string?

people say you guys had string? yeah, we had string. we made string. we used different plants, milk weed, the inner bark of the basswood tree. we take those stalks after they're dead, we pull them out of the ground. open them up. we take the inner fibers out and then we work them together on our leg. when the colonists got here in 1620 they noticed wampanoag women making string so fast that their eyes couldn't keep up with. then we dye it with different types of berries and roots for the coloring. so we have small bags like you see here and large bushel bags to store our dried vegetables so we'd have dry food during the winter. now, this right here is the interior of a house. those are actually all my daughters right there. those are three out of my four. i got four daughters and no boys, yeah. so that's the oldest daughter sitting down. her name's talia. the two sitting on the ground

tashima and stolum. 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 the201- and put this video across of the united states. -- we set up the script, i did them open upside. showed how walk-in auburn can show back there live back there. leads again what they do today show the tashfeen and showing their bikes we'll that's where kids relate to think were gone just because we have a difficult time sometimes we're still here every class in the united states sometimes when i

walk it's called the we'll wampanoag wampanoag way. undressed up and 17th century skins. when i walk in the classroom right, it's important to see the video on the screen, he sees me walking in. hardiest [laughs] he says, you have storms dad. , so it's a surreal moment. some inside these houses right, we have banning, we don't sleep on the ground, we have furs on the beds, mats in the beds. most of the houses got really big round shaped houses you're 70 degrees. when you making these houses, i build them we'll, he will have a fire pit an inside, just keep you warm during the winter. it is around shape, can't really see on the walls, but we

had bull rush mats on the walls interior frame we had mats two layers of bull rush mats. because the way that have shaped like a dome, he does get arise, go down underneath the mats, force the cold air to the middle, that keeps warmer going around in circles. when the europeans got here, they saw our houses and said the houses were so warm in the winter, that they saw children were and naked outside mentor and jump in the snow, so they get quite warm. we live like that for thousands of years. we went through that cycle, fall winter in spring, celebrate new years again, commit in the, ocean come in groups. no need for the winter, the more communal. in a winter community, in a hole anywhere from 300 to 3000 people before disease set in.

that was before any major interruption. that's called 16 13 right? one thing i want to say real quick as you heard the term loft survival. how did you survive back then? well we have been doing this for 12,000 years okay? ian you don't just roll over in bed one morning and say, jeez where i'm gonna get food today? there is a system already set up, generations long before, and people knew how to fish. so we call that 16 13 okay. let's move to 16 14. there was trading going on. first european traders over here, first we quarterback and 15 24, trading early 1600s.

back in 16 14 guys, when trading happen, between the french and the dutch and the indians, a lot of beaver pelts. but, what's happened in 16 14, there was an english captain name thomas -- down the coast. remember 16 14. he came down the coast and he went to an area which is called plymouth today. what we call tzatziki. i was a thriving wampanoag community that's how we describe yourself back those days. he went up to somebody said what are you? they probably wouldn't say wampanoag. they would describe themselves as wampanoag speaking community that there from. so they would say i'm up a

touch sick, what are you? >> when thomas came he took 19 baton six slaves. this happen to our people to. this is six years before the programs arrived here. took 19 pathetic, we calls nazi wampanoag took a not sick. told took them to spain solve them, the remainder were sold to england. one of those guys who were sold to england was called swan toe. you guys heard of swan talk. he lived with a merch named john slain. he lived there for five years. you gain some sort 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 is a wealthy man who said

was asking from this area. but where is? he's up with captain mason. he said go get him, i want to do another venture. so he sent somebody to go pick up squanto, mind you this is 16 19, almost five years. so he hasn't seen his home in five years, he's picked up in newfoundland, in 60 19 but thomas -- , the come down the coast. past moe he can island which is off main, pitched up it picked up a chief it is a language from sagamore. new all the english captains backed by name, so he knew a lot of traders. prior they kept on going down the, coast when they're going down the coast guys, in 60 19 they saw something extremely devastating, the most devastating thing that ever happened to our people,

disease. there was a major epidemic that happened between 16 16 and 16 19. with when squatters was over in england. skin turn yellow, people got open sores in their bodies and they died within two or three days once they got this. it wiped out the native population all along the coast anywhere from 70 to 90%, wiped out within two to three years. now that played didn't in fact a lot of people on the islands like nantucket, because it's hard for disease to travel over water. he but what we know about the plague, hepatitis, skin turn yellow open source. disease control came out over ten years ago and said it might be -- lap a squirrel assess. they believe the french stray

steps came over and they had rats on these train ships. the feces of the rats get into the water system and cause this disease. that's with the theory is now. i always say this every time i talk. he can put whatever name you want on it, it doesn't matter to me. when i do know is that it was the most devastating thing that ever happened to our people. so i asked drivers coming on the coast squanto. they come to pit dot sick. the final potasnik was pretty much devastated. so much not being taken a slave in 60 14, coming back home and finding out all his people are dead. is that gonna change you as a person? i think so. they end up going over to the vineyard, and there's up now, was also taken over to england as a slave in 16 11. he made it back. how we made it back was in 16

14. somebody asked him as a gold over the island where you come from? he wasn't done. he's probably thinking, yeah there's gold. you bring me back home all tell you where the goal is that. so 16 14, they brought him back home. that's when he yelled something in the native tongue that the english did not understand. a lot of natives came running to the beach, they attack the ship, and he had a chance to swim jumped the ship and swim to shore. so we made it back home. another ship coming in 16 19, after five years, he's thinking they might be coming to get me again and attack. so there's another fight breaks out. he gets injured badly. want to and the other guy got loose. they end up in the community of putin open.

oh 70 wampanoag communities. what we know he's a leader of the strongest guajardo community. so 70% squanto owns up there. let's fast-track to 16 20. pilgrims arriving. they arrive and what is called in plymouth what it's called today. they had a really bad year, that winter, a lot of people died. february was the deadliest month. they were building the home staying in the mayflower. they settled it because it was cleared out already. two days away 40 miles west of plymouth, he heard about these people building homes.

one thing we were not used to, we are always used to europeans coming over, we were used to them coming over and staying. what made these people different is that they brought their women and children. but he didn't know. so we said, you know how to speak english right? why don't you go and find out why these people are building their homes. he was probably thinking, well he's a sagamore chief to but he can speak english, and he's not one of my men, so i don't know what's gonna happen to him. 16 21, saga zach walks into the pogrom village. they considered him to be naked. he didn't have this much clothing as this guy does. just out on a cloth.

he goes in, welcome englishman in their own language, which they were shocked at seeing, somebody speaking english to them. he told him about the land, told him about the area, about the played the just came through. he stated this city hawkins is outside evening. they carefully watched him over night. for he said i'm gonna bring you a leader. he goes back, and later on that march the other leader comes along and bring 60 of his men and that's when they made the famous treaty, peace treaty of diplomacy between the natives and the pilgrims. you think about. it that played stopped dead in his tracks right before the territory. for thought think about why it

stop right there. you have to be thoughts. as two tribes didn't like each. other for these two generations before the europeans got there, you get a large bottle of water against the bay. the disease had to go over water,. then again as, -- i'll start to attack. the community was on the border of the narrow against us. the chief made alliance with the colonists. how he really felt with this english staying here, it wasn't one universal answer. you have to go from community to community. if your brother got taken by slave prior, are you going to be happy? no. and there were leaders that were happy. but some had a lot of power. they say if you go to war, i'll

help you out, and if i go to war you help me out. we know that treaty last 50 or 55 years, with no major conflict of war. later on in 16 21, that's when squanto comes to live with the colonists and he teaches them how to plant corn. that's what he is famous for right. teaching how to plant corn. that's why he is in the textbooks. says squanto was a changed person. he liked to have the power, he like to cause trouble back. then he died in 16 20, to get over those two years, he caused a lot of drama. he would come over and say better be careful, muscle wants to attack and go back and forth, so nasa was fed up. he sent his man to play mid-plymouth. they wanted squanto's head and hands sent back to him.

governor bracken's was thinking, i shouldn't do this, because if that'll break the treaty. but all of a sudden, actually masto comes out with gifts by the way,. but at the same time, there's a shipment coming in the water, and governor bradford was distracted, and he went way to, seconds the guys were frustrated, and they went back home. squanto dies in 16 22, and leaves stephen hopkins and a few others down in chatham, for trading. meeting great whatever. that evening when he was in one of the houses, he said squanto had a nosebleed that wouldn't stop. it was called something like indian fever backed, and some kind of hemorrhaging. but when he was lying on his deathbed, he asked the english

if you would be accepted in the gods. although he might have been a change person, he knew what he was doing. the guy right here doesn't get much praise in the textbooks. if it wasn't because of the sky, history would've been definitely different today. he made that treaty with the english in 16 21. 40 miles west he needed an ambassadorship here. that's when he sent hammock to live among the english. he love between stephen hopkins and allen's field, with over ten people fighting for ten years of his life. he was the closest native that the english consider to be a. friend it'll say much about his family. they say hop mock had more than one wife. i knew i wish one of his wives names because she plays a major

role in the diplomacy. she actually reports back and forth about what's going, on especially with squanto. but they never give her a name. so much for family structure. we're guessing he lived in a home that was quite normal as to what he was used to. but he kept peace between two people. he was considered to be a, and that is some who comes within a war and leads the battle. by angus tatters, you considered indestructible. how do you become that. you have special qualities, special people choose you. from then on you are raised. one of these final stages of the up unease, you've given a full knife. you're left alone for all winter. if he came back, he became an impetus, if you didn't even he wouldn't. he was highly respected among most people. he kept other people and native people who didn't like --

let's skip up a little bit here if you've ever been in the hole and, my home and this is the oldest house in the united states. this was built 16 84. we heard a little bit about praying town in the start of martha's vineyard, you know why it's called aga town today, and learning about the king james bible. they say he was one of my relatives, he knew the bible so well, it pretty preached to non native people. but not everybody liked what he was doing either. who's the chief called him out he said what are you doing said we have our own ways of doing things. he literally punched him in the face. but he continued to preach

eight. made it was the first prank down 16 51, there were about 14 of them. you had the cotton woods, john elliott's, what am i looking for here i want to talk about this right here. joel lot coons sun joel lacoomes he was teaching native people caleb was another. and these two guys would be in the first graduating class of harvard university back in six 1816 65. one graduated, kayla did one other did not. joel was considered bobby chariot, the reason he did not graduate.

two weeks before graduation he went to martha's vineyard. on the way back in stock here near nantucket and he got killed. it was probably his own people who did it, because christiana didn't make it over here till 59 or later, so they had a lot of tradition here. i always say about the praying indians. he didn't know what they were going through unless you walk a mile in their monica moccasins. so i didn't judge like. that but what harvey did back in 2011. they gave us a posthumous degree in his name. this is it right here. when elliott was teaching the bible to native people back in the fifties and sixties, he felt like the native people were not picking up the religion quick enough, being james bible in english. so what he did, he hired native

interpreters and taught them in wampanoag, my native language. there's a real good story behind this. somebody heard about language? back in the 1990s, or somebody from my a woman from my community, she's a vice chair her name is jesse little known baird. she was having dreams. she said people were coming into her dream, speaking in different tongue. this happened night after night after night. said people looked familiar from asked it but they did not know her names. one of the dreams people spoke english tour. they said the wampanoag people have the chance to get the language back. so she took it upon herself, went to mit, graduated with the degree in linguistics, and put her language back together. and how this was done. elders were still able to speak some of the language. old records of the wampanoag. similar language families.

the king james bond bible and wampanoag. we had one those first editions. so today we have our language back. my wife is one of the teachers of the language. we have a monastery school. we teach pre-k up to third grade, and every year we had a great to it. going back three years ago, maybe two, the wampanoag tribe is still in mash be high school as top as a credit course like french, english, dutch reporting. yes that's real cool story, because if you lose your culture, you lose part of what you are, your identity. we got it back. let's fast forward to the next war. the war broke out. when i can tell you in 16 57, 16 60, that's when two of the big leaders lost their lives.

bradford passed away in 57, -- in 16 16. he got the next generation coming up, i didn't care for each other much. why? the thought of land people thought of loner ship, and the other people did not think of ownership. when culture would build fences around where they live, the other culture would walk across what they call their backyard. you can't be there anymore. that's my culture. for native person they're saying, would he mean i can't be here anymore? i don't get. that is land is a part of what you are as a person, as a culture to different way of thought. in 16 75, the war broke out. in june, the last round was in massachusetts about a year or so, another five years or so moving north.

medic comic was a second son. he was someone to reckon with. heard on mantle can i'm person about talking bad about him and he took his canoe and paddle out here. -- that war lasted about a year and ended up where benjamin church, led by david guide, fighting the mega nick, august 12th, 16 76, called mount hope, spoken oaken. when they found, they dismantled him, took his head off, took his arms, and through the round. took his had put around a post for 20 years. and i'm thinking, why would that do to his wife and kids you know? that's not right. so a lot of these people were

sold as slaves. there's no strengthen slavery, but i can think close of what's going on today. a lot of these people were salt down to bermuda, one of the islands down there. these people still have that cultural identity. they know who they are. so we has wampanoag people go down and visit them one year, and they come up to our powwow and nationally, by the fourth weekend of iran comes. yes cars just after a couple weeks ago, so it's kind of cool. this is what happened here. large population of 400 people are so over here on nantucket. there is a vaccine given to make a native people, 1763, 64, the wiped out about thirds of the population of people. you heard the story a little bit earlier, and that's true

you know, but what happened to these people afterwards? they isolated obviously by themselves. after that a lot of people may took enough to mash be, lot of people were spread out. from a person's personal lens, a lot of people say it is not recorded it's not true. that's not true. so that happened. let's go further a little bit. you guys heard the president jackson? 1830, he wanted to remove all native people on the east coast which he did, west of the message. oklahoma was one of the states. those agents came around here too for one but all people. there's one non native voices it stood up.

if you bring these people out west, they are going to die. the reason they're gonna dies they rely on seafood in there die. and they believed him. and that's why we were left alone. indians and nantucket, who knows the last two indians. they died within seven months apart. what else do we have here? this is kind of cool right here. we might be doing this next year out here. seriously. we just got a 40 foot white pine log which is gonna make a 20-minute boat. it's gonna be considered to be

the largest boat in new england. this picture is from we made in 2002 in martha's vineyard. all it back in the nineties, we always say, we used to make paddles to nantucket, paddles in the vineyard. that's past tense. why can't we do this again? so we had a 30 foot popular tree donated, that's what this is. we also had a 20 footer of white pine. the guy in the back his name is and one we didn't. we all wanted to stay at this, both big 30 football right. hello i'm and i looked at the we said let's race for. so we took 2:12 foot boats, he took one i took one and went across the eel river and looking at the wampanoag home

site. he beat me by about half a boat length. clause -- this took three years of planning. we finally made the trip though. involve many nations of people, all different nations of people. we left a place called would sawyer that? august 18th of 2002. we left 6 am, we love to pick a high tide, we tended with the winds to our back, we landed over tasha moore tons marie, what if it was a straight shot 25 miles. we had to get out of a fairy lane so it was a seven mile paddle. guess how long it took? also tell you that the most experienced battles including

myself were saying three hours to do. everybody sing three hours. there's nobody living who could say this is how long it will take you. and he guesses in the crowd? >> -- >> an hour to half, you're absolutely correct. what happened right is when we made this trip, we kind of beat the ferry. we had a few hundred people -- knock scott point down would still. most people had to take a shuttle to the ferry, take the ferry over to vineyard haven, take another shuttle to tasha moe beach. and we beat them by an half an hour. so they were telling, as where you have a big celebration you know. we're gonna be able to dancing and singing when you guys arrive. even atlantic maybe it. [laughs] so remember paddling in, that day when we left it was really cloudy. all the fog broke, and i'm

paddling in and going where is everybody? we weren't wearing watches so we don't know how long it was taking us right. we saw these people on the beach in bathing suits. bathers from nebraska. so once we landed, we were dressed in 17th century skins you know? the first thing they said to us, was you guys do this every day? i said this isn't being in a couple hundred years. but we got this 40 foot boat, we got a lot of things we want to do with it next year. and one of the things is have nantucket involved. we got a lot of ideas so stay tuned. leaping up to 1870 here. that's when a lot of communities got incorporated mashpee now it's considered

townships. we're gonna give you 25 acres of your own land but now we're gonna taxi on it. yeah. congratulations. that word incorporation means a different term than what we thought. so we lost a lot of land by that. fast forward to the 1900s. cape cod became cape cod, a tourist attraction. nobody really move to mashpee before the nineties. . and mashpee was the fastest developing town in massachusetts in the nineties. today, we have we literally just got fully recognized by the u.s. government in 2007 as a people. what we do today as we have health services, health education we do our powwow,

which is july 4th weekend. this right here is a special dance we did this past powell. this is part of my family and we did it for my brother who passed away back in 97, he got killed rhode island. his name was melvyn comes. we did it we danced for him. i hadn'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 very. my father was raised here, my aunt was raised here, my grandparents were raised here, mike grandfather was a drives the second, the first being drives koom from mash be.

1886 that my grandmother moved west, one in 1895, passed away in 1964. she had a stillborn son 1919. i visited the grounds yesterday, and i googled indians on nantucket. i came across a picture that i had in my living room. this is my grandmother. the nantucket historical site has it right here. there was a name underneath it, that's ruth west, that's my grandmother. she passed away in 1964. i do more digging where her actual roots are from. this is one woman, i've heard from xi doesn't show up in the records in mashpee i can't find the records in the corner, some to keep digging, see what i

find. thank you guys. any questions? that's my story. guys applause >> tonight, we look at the cold war. historian william hitchcock discusses presidential leadership during the cold war and the air is lasting impact on politics. he's the author of the age of eisenhower: america in the world in the 19 fifties. watch tonight beginning at eight eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span 3.

up next on history bookshelf, to mark the 400th anniversary of the pilgrims arrival in plymouth, massachusetts, nathaniel philbrick on his broke mayflower, a story of courage, community and war. mr. philbrick details the conflicts relationship between the english settlers and the indians describing the first thanksgiving celebration in the early years of new england. we recorded this in plymouth, massachusetts in 2006, the year the book was published. >> my name is peggy baker. i am the director of pilgrim newseum and i'd like to welcome you all here tonight for what is a grand occasion for all of us who love pilgrims. because we are in essence gathered to celebrate the first well written comprehensive narrative about plymouth colony in over 50 years.