People of the Land: The Wampanoag
This exhibit was produced in collaboration with Plimoth Plantation and modern day Wampanoag and shows how the people that inhabited this area lived.
Artifacts which were recovered from archaeological excavations as well as objects which have been produced for the exhibit show how materials, food, and vessels would have been made and used.
The theme comes from a statement made by Nanepashemet (1954-1995) describing the Wampanoag tribe's philosophy... "We have lived with this land for thousands of generations - fishing in the waters, planting, and harvesting crops, hunting the four-legged and winged beings and giving respect and thanks for each and every thing taken for our use. We were originally taught to use many resources, remembering to use them with care, respect, and with a mind towards preserving some for the seven generations of unborn, and not to waste anything."
When the Pilgrims first stepped upon the shores of Cape Cod Bay in the cold, forbidding November of 1620, they found not a New World, but an old one — an ancient landscape that bore the traces of 10,000 years of human endeavor. Fields, gardens, villages and well-worn paths had been etched indelibly into a mosaic of environments that in 1620 defined Cape Cod.