OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER” — THE MASSASOIT OF THE 1 WAMPANOAG (THOSE OF THE DAWN) “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY 1. Massasoit is not a personal name but a title, translating roughly as “The Shahanshah.” Like most native American men of the period, he had a number of personal names. Among these were Ousamequin or “Yellow Feather,” and Wasamegin. He was not only the sachem of the Pokanoket of the Mount Hope peninsula of Narragansett Bay, now Bristol and nearby Warren, Rhode Island, but also the grand sachem or Massasoit of the entire Wampanoag people. The other seven Wampanoag sagamores had all made their submissions to him, so that his influence extended to all the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay, all of Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and the Elizabeth islands. His subordinates led the peoples of what is now Middleboro (the Nemasket), the peoples of what is now Tiverton (the Pocasset), and the peoples of what is now Little Compton (the Sakonnet). The other side of the Narragansett Bay was controlled by Narragansett sachems. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE MASSASOIT OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER” 1565 It would have been at about this point that Canonicus would have been born, the 1st son of the union of the son and daughter of the Narragansett headman Tashtassuck. Such a birth in that culture was considered auspicious, so we may anticipate that this infant will grow up to be a Very Important Person. Canonicus’s principle place of residence was on an island near the present Cocumcussoc of Jamestown and Wickford, Rhode Island. The island would receive the name Conanicut (Quononicut) in his honor. He had three younger brothers. Eventually, Canonicus would share rule with his brother Mascus, with Canonicus providing leadership in counsel and Mascus serving as war leader. During this time the Massachusett, Wampanoag, Nipmuc, Sakonnet, Nauset, Shawomet, Niantic, and Coweset peoples came to be subject to Narragansett rule. At the height of their influence, the Narragansett ruled about 30,000 people. Mascus died before the arrival of the English. However, shortly after his death, in about 1618, Ousamequin Yellow Feather (the Massasoit) of Pokanoket and 10 of his sagamores (subordinate sachems) would be obligated to attend a council held by Canonicus and Mascus’s son and successor, Miantonomi, and formally acknowledge himself and his lands as vassals of the Narragansett. –Politics as usual. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The Massasoit HDT WHAT? INDEX OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER”THE MASSASOIT 1590 Ousamequin Yellow Feather, who would become the Massasoit of his people the Wampanoag, was born in the village of Pokanoket near present-day Bristol, Rhode Island.2 This group of people were considered to be “Those of the Dawn” because –living as they were along the seaboard– they had gone the farthest in the direction of the sunrise. 2. Massasoit is not a personal name but a title, translating roughly as “Sachem of the Sachems,” as in “The Shahanshah.” Like most native American men of the period, he had a number of personal names. Among these were Ousamequin or “Yellow Feather,” and Wasamegin. The above may arguably be –and may forever remain– the only statue erected by Massachusetts in honor of a politician from Rhode Island! HDT WHAT? INDEX THE MASSASOIT OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER” LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The Massasoit HDT WHAT? INDEX OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER”THE MASSASOIT 1606 Among the Wampanoag tribespeoples, the Nauset and Mashpee bands, due to their exposed position on Cape Cod, had contact with the expedition of Captain Samuel de Champlain. (At this point their Massasoit, known to them as Ousamequin “Yellow Feather,” was only a teenager.) Meanwhile, up the coast at the French trading post at Port Royal (Annapolis) in Nova Scotia, a carpenter was HDT WHAT? INDEX THE MASSASOIT OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER” being buried: CAPE COD: The very gravestones of those Frenchmen are probably PEOPLE OF older than the oldest English monument in New England north of CAPE COD the Elizabeth Islands, or perhaps anywhere in New England, for if there are any traces of Gosnold’s storehouse left, his strong works are gone. Bancroft says, advisedly, in 1834, “It requires BANCROFT a believing eye to discern the ruins of the fort”; and that there were no ruins of a fort in 1837. Dr. Charles T. Jackson tells me JACKSON that, in the course of a geological survey in 1827, he discovered a gravestone, a slab of trap rock, on Goat Island, opposite Annapolis (Port Royal), in Nova Scotia, bearing a Masonic coat- of-arms and the date 1606, which is fourteen years earlier than the landing of the Pilgrims. This was left in the possession of HALIBURTON Judge Haliburton, of Nova Scotia. What, a “carpenter,” rather than a “Mason”? Yes indeed, the Masonic Order has decided that whatever Charles T. Jackson might have supposed when he found the grave marker in 1827 –whatever Jackson might have offered to Henry Thoreau– this buried guy could not have been of them: The Masonic Stone of 1606 By R.W. Bro. REGINALD V. HARRIS, HDT WHAT? INDEX OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER”THE MASSASOIT Grand Historian, Grand Lodge of Nova Scotia3 It will be good to read this article in conjunction with Bro. Harris’ article on “Freemasonry in Nova Scotia” published in The Builder of August last; and with the Study Club article of last month. Bro. Harris’ critical analysis of the claims of the Nova Scotia stone to be the monument of the earliest known appearance of Freemasonry on this continent was published in Transactions of Nova Scotia Lodge of Research, Jan. 31, 1916; as here given he has altered it somewhat. WHAT some Masonic students and historians regard as the earliest trace of the existence of Freemasons or Freemasonry on this continent so far as we are now aware, is afforded by the inscriptions on a stone found in 1827 upon the shores of Annapolis Basin, Nova Scotia. There are two accounts of the finding of this stone. The first, from the pen of Judge Thomas Chandler Haliburton (known to us as the author of “Sam Slick”), was written in the year of the finding of the stone or very shortly afterward, and is to be found in his HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF NOVA SCOTIA, published in 1829 (Vol. II., pp. 155-157), as follows: About six miles below the ferry is situated Goat Island, which separates the Annapolis Basin from that of Digby, and forms two entrances to the former. The western channel, though narrow, is deep and generally preferred to others. A small peninsula, extending from the Granville shore, forms one of its sides. On this point of land the first piece of ground was cleared for cultivation in Nova Scotia by the French. They were induced to make this selection on account of the beauty of its situation, the good anchorage opposite it the command which it gave them of the channel, and the facility it afforded of giving the earliest notice to the garrison at Port Royal of the entrance of an enemy into the Lower Basin. In the year 1827 the stone was 3. As published in The Builder Magazine for October 1924 (Volume X, Number 10). HDT WHAT? INDEX THE MASSASOIT OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER” discovered upon which they had engraved the date of their first cultivation of the soil, in memorial of their formal possession of the country. It is about two feet and a half long and two feet broad, and of the same kind as that which forms the substratum of Granville Mountain. On the upper part are engraved the square and compass of the Free Mason, and in the centre, in large and deep Arable figures the date 1606. It does not appear to have been dressed by a mason, but the inscription has been cut on its natural surface. The stone itself has yielded to the power of the climate, and both the external front and the interior parts of the letters alike suffered from exposure to the weather: the seams on the back of it have opened, and, from their capacity to hold water and the operation of frost on it when thus confined, it is probable in a few years it would have crumbled to pieces. The date is distinctly visible, and although the figure 0 is worn down to one-half of its original depth and the upper part of the figure 6 nearly as much, yet no part of them is obliterated — they are plainly discernible to the eye and easily traced by the finger. At a subsequent period, when the country was conquered by the English, some Scotch emigrants were sent out by Sir William Alexander, who erected a fort on the site of the French cornfields, previous to the Treaty of St. Germain’s. The remains of this fort may be traced with great ease, the old parade, the embankment and ditch, have not been disturbed, and preserve their original form. It was occupied by the French for many years after the peace of 1632. * * * * The other account of the finding of the stone is contained in a letter written nearly thirty years after the event, and now in the possession of the New England Historic-Genealogical Society from the pen of Dr. Charles T. Jackson of Boston, the celebrated chemist and geologist. It is in the following words: June 2, 1856.