Delta Podcast Transcript Introduction Paul Musgrave: Welcome to Final Examination, a podcast that looks at the end of the world. ​ ​ I’m Paul Musgrave, and I’m a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Over the past semester in the Fall of 2018, four teams of students have researched, reported, and produced stories about how people have dealt with the end of the world right here in Massachusetts. In this episode, Nate Reynolds and Abby McDonough take us to Ponkapoag to answer the question: Why did a civilization of Christian American Indians that coexisted with English Puritans disappear in the eighteenth century? ACT I: CANTON GHOST STORY / EXPOSITION Nate: Most children enjoy hearing ghost stories… But rarely do they enter one themselves. ​ <<music>>1 ​ ​ 1 Original composition by Mike Orlando, Greg Fournier, Kathrine Esten, and Deepika Singh. ​ Stephen Turley and Mark Nannery were only twelve years old when they uncovered the secret of a two hundred year-old Indian burial ground beneath their quiet Massachusetts town. These children accidentally shed the first light in centuries on a society once engulfed in war, indoctrinated by its leaders, murdered by its sworn protectors… and forgotten in history… until now. <<bird sounds>>2 ​ ​ The date - September 13, 1969…The place - Canton, Massachusetts.3 A mystery had been brewing in the town for some time. A year earlier, a resident’s dog had sauntered home carrying a human skull in its mouth that the Canton Police attempted to trace to no avail...4Until two young boys stumbled upon the answer on that fateful September day. Stephen Turley and Mark Nannery were exploring an abandoned gravel pit in the neighborhood behind Burr Lane when they found an ancient-looking clay pipe embedded in the ground.5 Intrigued, the twelve-year old boys dug further, excitedly shifting through the dust and sand. What they found next was not formed out of clay: they were bones…real, human bones. First a jaw, then a leg. By the time Stephen found his father, the local elementary school principal, to show him what they had discovered, every kid in the neighborhood was digging in the gravel for whatever they could find. When archaeologist Dena Dincauze and her team arrived at the sight four days later, parts 2 Mike Koenig, "Bird In Rain Sounds," licensed under an Attribution 3.0 License. ​ ​ 3 The boys were on Burr Lane, “a small road, more of a dirt driveway off Pleasant Street.” ​ ​ 4 In 1968, a Canton resident was “shocked” to see his dog return with a human skull. Police Chief Daniel Keleher ​ ​ ​ “knew it would be impossible to locate the rest of the body given the provenance of the dog’s mouth.” 5 The pipe, which is stained from tobacco use, has a small set of marker initials saying it was made by R. Tippet. ​ ​ Three generations of the Tippet family, from Bristol, England, were pipemakers in the late 17th and early 18th ​ ​ centuries. This pipe was made sometime between the years 1660 and 1722. of two skeletons had already been unearthed in the pit. 6 7 Dincauze was able to fit the Canton boys’ mysterious discovery right into place in Massachusetts history. Unbeknownst to their gleeful searching, the children had unearthed a story of the end of a world that was entombed underground decades before the American Revolution. The remnants discovered in Canton belonged to an eighteenth-century American Indian named Simon George. During George’s lifetime, the town of Canton was known as Ponkapoag, organized by English settlers in their early colonial history as a place to convert American Indians to Christianity.8 Simon George died in 1739 as one of the last members of the Praying Indians, a society where the English peacefully coexisted with Massachusetts Natives who adopted Christianity as their own religion.9 If this world was once so prosperous, why was the Ponkapoag burial ground discovered in Canton left unmarked and forgotten? What happened to the Praying Indians? We’ll find out after this message from our sponsors. <<music>>10 6 By September 17, lead archaeologist Dena Dincauze arrived on the site. “The children had removed parts of two ​ skeletons,” she recalled in a later interview with the Canton Citizen, “and members of the Massachusetts ​ ​ Archeological Society had already examined one part of a body in place.” 7 Lead archaeologist Dena Dincauze’s records on the excavation are included in her papers at the University of ​ ​ Massachusetts Amherst. Dincauze was a UMass lecturer specializing in the prehistoric archaeology of eastern and ​ central New England. 8 The leaders of Dorchester, Mass. were asked to “lay out” land for the Ponkapoag plantation were tribal leaders ​ could be controlled and acclimated to the “ways of the white man…. it was important to save these souls, to gather ​ up all the Indians he taught to practice Christianity, and move them to one place under the watchful eyes of their guardians so that they could practice the ways of a Christian.” 9 http://www.thecantoncitizen.com/2014/03/20/true-tales-burr-pt1/ ​ 10 Original composition by Mike Orlando, Greg Fournier, Kathrine Esten, and Deepika Singh. ​ ______________________________________________________________________________ Advertisement 1 Abby: We’d like to thank the Commonwealth Honors College at UMass Amherst for ​ ​ participating in our podcast. The Commonwealth Honors College is a community of scholars that provides an inclusive and diverse environment for students who are passionate about their studies. Alongside the vast resources of a large, public research university, the Commonwealth Honors College offers immersive courses in all fields of study, and provides students a personal and hands-on space to prosper through smaller, discussion-based classes. Admission to the honors college is open to incoming first-year students, current UMass students in their first two years of study, and transfer students from other universities. To learn more, follow the Commonwealth Honors College on twitter @UMassCHC, online at www.honors.umass.edu or ​ ​ visit the Bloom Advising Center on the second floor of the honors college building. ​ ______________________________________________________________________________ Nate: To understand how the Praying Indian world ended, we must go back in history. My name ​ ​ is Nate Reynolds. Abby: And I’m Abby McDonough. We’re here to help guide you through the true story of the ​ ​ Praying Indians of Massachusetts. It is a tale of conflicting cultures, interests, and armies: it is a tale of the end of a world. ACT TWO: BACKGROUND ON THE PRAYING INDIANS Nate: Before we start, we’ll take a moment to acknowledge the terms we’re using. When ​ ​ referring to the general, non-European population of indigenous descent, we’ll use the term “American Indian.” While this term does have colonizer roots, it is consistent with academic literature. Additionally, “American Indian” has been positively reclaimed and redefined in the modern era. When possible, we will use specific tribal names or self-assigned titles. The term “Praying Indian” is used in reference to the specific society of Christian American Indians in Massachusetts during this time period.11 12 13 Abby: The classical story of English settlers and American Indians in Massachusetts is a familiar ​ ​ one, wrought with bloodshed, sickness, betrayal, and death. However, it fails to recognize a small faction that lived a very different history. 11 “Indigenous Peoples in the United States represent more than 550 distinct tribes...Such diversity makes a ​ universally agreed upon, general racial label for these populations difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.” p. 3 ​ 12 “[American Indian] is commonly used by many Indigenous Peoples in the United States, even today. It is the legal ​ ​ ​ definition of these Peoples in United States law.” 13 The Native American Journalist Association reporting guidelines state that American Indian and Native American ​ ​ may be used interchangeably - only in cases to describe “two or more individuals of different tribal affiliations.” Otherwise, preferred tribal names should be used. Arriving in 1620, Massachusetts Bay colonists introduced many new concepts to the area - Christianity, new weapons, and perhaps most devastatingly, disease14. The surviving American Indians were viewed as an unknown and dangerous entity by the European colonists who had their own disparate languages, religions, and culture. In an effort to assimilate American Indians, the General Court of Massachusetts passed an “Act for the Propagation of the Gospel amongst the Indians” in 1646.15 The Christianization campaign was led by Massachusetts Puritan settlers and was supported by the Massachusetts and British governments, along with prominent institutions such as Harvard University. In 1650, Harvard University established the Harvard Indian College. It initially began as a fundraising effort for the broader University, but it was a school entirely dedicated to the education of American Indian youth. American Indians did not have to pay for tuition and housing, so long as they studied the Gospel. It was the hope of the Harvard Indian School and its supporters that graduates would go on to spread the word of the Christian gospel in their American Indian communities.16 However, true Christianization could not occur until the Bible was translated. This was a difficult task, as hardly any Puritans spoke the languages of the American Indians they viewed as 14 Diseases that Europeans had developed an immunity to proved devastating to the Native population, and by 1640 ​ some tribes declined in population by over 90%. See Salisbury, Neal. "The Indians' Old World: Native Americans and the Coming of Europeans", The William and Mary Quarterly, 1996. 15 The English government dedicated more than 12,000 pounds sterling in the cause. ​ ​ ​ 16 The founding Harvard Charter of 1650 dedicates the institution to "the education of the English & Indian Youth of ​ ​ ​ this Country in knowledge: and godliness." savages.