I know I said that I would post more Muppet stuff this week,
but I think it’s best to let that one sit for a while and we can come back to
it. You see, I wasn’t really planning
too far ahead and didn’t realize that Thanksgiving was coming so soon.
Thanksgiving is a complicated holiday in the grand scheme of
things. And I don’t just mean because
not everyone gets along with their relatives.
The holiday as we know it today actually stems from the 1860s when a
prominent writer and magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale (the woman who wrote
the children’s poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, I kid you not) lobbied the U.S.
government to create a national Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving holidays were nothing unusual in
the early U.S., but they varied from state to state. President Abraham Lincoln, though, saw the
potential in having such a day after some major Union victories in the
concurrently happening Civil War and turned Hale’s idea into a national
holiday. However, that’s not the story
we attach to Thanksgiving. Instead, we
tell a story about Puritans and native Wampanoag people sitting down at this
great big feast in Plymouth which became known as the “first
Thanksgiving”. There was a feast like
that, too. Granted, it happened two
months earlier in September and the main course was venison rather than
turkey.
However, looking back at that
feast it’s hard not to just look at it and see it as, well . . . a precursor to
genocide.
The native people of this continent have not been treated
well. Heck, they’re still not treated
all that well. Things like “paper
genocide” deny people their heritage.
The U.S. government continues to break treaties made with native
peoples. Not to mention the poverty
often found on reservations.
What can we do to make things better? Well, a good place to start might be to
embrace their stories. After all,
nothing brings people closer together than sharing stories.
Which brings us to the character of Moshup the Giant.
Moshup is a culture hero of the Wampanoag and Mohegan peoples,
the same tribes that lived in the area of Plymouth before the Puritans showed
up. Stories vary on the exact details
regarding Moshup. However, most of the
versions I’ve read say he lived on the island of Martha’s Vineyard near a town
now called Gay Head. There is even a
crater there, where it’s said that Moshup sat.
Like many culture heroes, Moshup’s actions shaped the very
landscape. Moshup liked to eat
whales. He would catch the whales with
his bare hands and then roast them over a fire made from the trees that he
would rip right out of the ground. In
order to get out into the water where the whales are, he threw stones out into
the water to stand on. These stones
still exist, spanning the between Cuttyhunk and the mainland. Today, they’re called the Devil’s Bridge.
He was a great friend to the local people. He would share his food with them and they
would share their tobacco with him. One
year, the Wampanoag people gathered up all the tobacco they had harvested in a
year and gave it to Moshup in appreciation of all he had done for them. Moshup smoked the tobacco, which was barely
enough for someone of his size, and then emptied the ashes into the ocean. The ashes became the island of Nantucket.
Another story tells of how Moshup once fought and killed a
great man-eating bird monster. He waited
until the bird seemed to get close enough to rip out his heart with its talons
and then grabbed the killer bird and wrung it’s neck. It was shortly after that Moshup met Squant,
the sea-woman who would become his wife (well, second wife. He had some trouble with the first one).
Though there are bound to be variations, pretty much every
version of the story I’ve found ends with Moshup leaving. He slips into the bay or leaves for some cave
somewhere. But before he goes, he warns
the Wampanoag and Mohegan peoples that a strange breed of man with pale skin
would come to their shore. He warned
that they should not let the pale people come ashore, for if they did then
their people would be no more.
And you know, he was pretty much right. Though Wampanoag and Mohegan people still
exist, their way of life was never really the same after those pale people came
ashore.
It still isn’t and the U.S. government still tries to screw
over these people. Just this year, the
Department of the Interior issued a decision in which it refused to reaffirm
its own authority to confirm the status of the Mashpee Wampanoag Reservation.
This could pave the way for the reservation to be taken out of trust,
which is bad news. Millions of dollars
in funding are being lost or delayed that are needed for education, clean water
programs, emergency services, housing and substance abuse programs.
If you want to read more about the Mashpee Wampanoag
Reservation and their legal troubles, you can go to their web page or look for
the hashtag #standwithmashpee on Twitter.
There’s even a link to the law they want to get passed. I’ll also give you a link to where I got some
of the Moshup stories if you want to see more.
This Thanksgiving, enjoy your food and enjoy your family,
but remember there are still people out there who are a huge part of the
American story that still need help.
Until next time.
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