They were lured aboard Capt. Thomas Hunt’s ship on the auspices of “trucking,” what trading was called in those days. Then they were beaten, bound and kidnapped.
They were lured aboard Capt. Thomas Hunt’s ship on the auspices of “trucking,” what trading was called in those days.
Then they were beaten, bound and kidnapped. Hunt sold the seven Nauset and 20 Patuxet Wampanoag tribal members into slavery when he reached Spain. It was 1614, and it marks the early days of slavery in America, a little known story tucked behind the arrival of the Mayflower.
In the end, history is always about perspective – who is telling it. That’s why Plymouth 400 Executive Director Michele Pecoraro says she’s thrilled that Mashpee tribal members Paula and Steve Peters’ multimedia traveling exhibit “'OUR' Story: 400 Years of Wampanoag History” is going virtual, and will air live on Plymouth 400’s Facebook page at 11 a.m. Sept. 26. The Peters created and produced the exhibit and the hour-long virtual tour, which tells the little-known story of the tribal peoples’ encounters with the Europeans.
Pecoraro noted that this tale of treachery framing the colonization of Plymouth animates in the virtual tour’s dramatic images and video segments of Wampanoag historic interpreters shouldering the mantle of the native people involved.
The virtual exhibit is currently accessible on the Plymouth 400 website, plymouth400inc.org. Paula Peters and others will introduce the live-streamed launch on Sept. 26, which will feature a discussion at the end of the tour. PACTV will also air the tour and share it with other community television stations, Pecoraro said. Viewers will be able to participate in a question and answer session at the end of the live stream presentation.
Of the 27 who were kidnapped and enslaved, Tisquantum returned home five years later to find his tribal settlement in Patuxet wiped out. Known as Squanto, he would wind up playing a key role in history as he assisted the Pilgrim separatists who arrived a year later.
It seems little wonder that the Pilgrims’ encounters with the Nauset on what is now known as First Encounter Beach in Nauset was contentious. While Capt. John Smith and Edward Winslow condemned Hunt’s betrayal of the Native Americans, later generations of Europeans in America would sever the head of Massassoit’s son for fighting against a tide of colonization that exploited Native lands and subverted Native culture and beliefs.
In "Mourt’s Relation," Edward Winslow shares his meeting with the mother of captured and enslaved natives, relating that she wailed and cried for her loss:
“The Nausets are as near southeast of them, and are a hundred strong, and those were of whom our people had encountered as we before related. They are much incensed and provoked against the English .......by reason of one Hunt, a master of a ship, who deceived the people, and got them under color of trucking with them, twenty out of this very place where we inhabit, and seven men from Nauset, and carried them away and sold them for slaves, like a wretched man that cares not what mischief he doth for his profit.”