Plimouth Plantation

A Blast from the Past

Located just outside of Plymouth, MA, Plimouth Plantation  is a wonderful living history site.  (Click on the title of this post to visit their website).  It does a great job taking  the visitor back to the past.  In the Wampanoag home site the interpreters, all Native Americans themselves, share with the visitor both the culture of the 1620’s tribal people as well as the assimilation of Native American culture with American pop culture--if you care to ask.  

If found myself more interested during this trip about one culture’s assimilation into another’s.  In the past I had not realized there were still native people in the northeast.  Having grown up in CT. I’d only had contact with people who might tell me, “I’m part Indian” the same way I might have shared, “I”m part Italian”  An important part of my ethnic heritage and a large part of who I am--but it was no longer  very relevant to my everyday American girl school life.  When my family traveled west in the 1960’s I saw many people of Native heritage and naturally, at 9 years old,  I was intrigued.  But modern day native cultures in modern day eastern seaboard states--I just didn’t realized they existed.  And to be honest, when I heard of the Foxwoods Casino, allowed to be built on tribal lands I really did think--oh, here are some people of Native American decent trying to cash in on a good deal.  Now however,  I see I was wrong.   There really is a people group in CT. who remember their native, cultural past and feel a loss for it.   I spoke to a Native American man last week who had a grandparent who had spent the first 6 years of his life in a Wetu (the Native American ‘wigwam’ of the Wampanoag people)right there in Massachusetts at the same time my own dad’s parents were starting their family in suburban Philadelphia.  He talked to me about the loss he felt for the way of life of his grandparents and people and he spoke about the desire and goal to keep his culture alive and thriving for future generations.

I guess, with all my thoughts recently of my own children, coming to terms with who they are and how their past and ethnic heritage will fit in with their present and future, I have a lot more interest in these types of things.  And I guess  a bit more sensitivity too.

My pictures of Plimouth Plantation are not great.  I guess I didn’t want to take pictures of the actual people, since they are real people and it’s not some kind of zoo!    The interpreters in the 1627 village, a replica of the original Plimouth, stay in character as they talk and  answer questions about their life and times.

Here is a picture of Kai checking out the dugout canoe at the Wampanoag site, the kids posing on a cannon from the fort (are you supposed to let your kids sit on the 400 year old cannon?), my family in a typical Plimouth home and the kids playing in the hands on area inside the visitor center(no problem photographing these living history interpreters). Top picture is  the colonial village from the fort--note the beautiful bay in the distance.