After nearly 400 years, the Pokanoket tribe can finally return to their ancestral land. Brown University announced last week that it had transferred ownership of a portion of its land in Bristol, roughly 255 acres, to a preservation trust established by the Pokanoket Indian Tribe. The remaining 120 acres will be sold to the town next year, with no development allowed. This mural honoring the Pokanoket tribe, features a portrayal of Metacomet, the last king of the tribe, standing on the shore of Mount Hope Bay. It’s a site that’s sacred to the Pokanokets. We first wrote about the mural at its dedication last year. It can be found behind the 133 Club in East Providence. From WPRI:
The tribe holds significant historical importance as one of the first to sign a peace treaty with the pilgrims who arrived in Massachusetts and to participate in the first Thanksgiving in 1621.
The land is also deeply meaningful to Native American and Indigenous communities, as it is the ancestral home of the Pokanoket leader Metacom (King Philip) and the site of his death in 1676.
“This land is special to us and we can now take care of it the way the Creator intended for us to do so,” Pokanoket Tribe Chief Sachem Dancing Star said.
Massasoit Ousamequin, the sachem who famously helped the Pilgrims survive their first years, had two sons: Wamsutta and Metacomet. (Although Massasoit was only a title, English colonists mistook it as his name and it stuck.) After his death in 1661, his eldest son, Wamsutta, assumed leadership of the Pokanokets and other local tribes. Within a year he was dead and Metacomet (a.k.a. Metacom) stepped up to become the sachem of the Wampanoag Nation.
Following Massasoit’s death, relations between the colonists and the indigenous communities unraveled completely, resulting in the devastation of King Philip’s War which ran from 1675 to 1678. Philip made Mount Hope his base of operations, and it was here that he was eventually killed by a colonial militia. Philip’s body was cut into pieces. His head was sent to the Plymouth settlement where it was mounted on a pike at the entrance. There it remained for more than two decades.
It is not known where Massasoit was buried.
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More about the names.
The brothers acquired the names, Alexander and Philip, references to Alexander the Great and his father Philip of Macedon, following the death of Massasoit. Wamsutta appeared before the Plymouth court to request that he and his brother be given English names in accordance with Wampanoag custom, in which new names marked significant moments in time (such as the death of their father). The court agreed to the request.
However, Russell Bourne writes in “The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England 1675-1678,” that “Certainly the title ‘King’ was bestowed on Philip as a jeer—from propagandists who wished to exaggerate his role in the war that bore his name—but the name Philip was given and taken in a way perfectly proper for a native prince of this time.”
Nathaniel Philbrick cites the court record in his excellent history “Mayflower”;
At the earnest request of Wamsutta, desiring that in regard his father is lately deceased, and he being desirous, according to the custom of the natives, to change his name, that the Court would confer an English name upon him, which accordingly they did, and therefore ordered, that for the future he shall be called by the name of Alexander of Pokanoket; and desiring the same in the behalf of his brother, they have named him Philip.
Adding, “From that day forward, Massasoit’s sons were known, at their own request, by Christian names.” Philip was known to have signed documents with the letter P.
Looking south toward the Mt. Hope Bridge.