Linda Coombs’ striking book “Colonization and the Wampanoag Story” raises imperative questions about how cultural information is decided and shared. This intriguing book examines the colonization of New England from the perspective of Native people.
Coombs begins with a narrative of traditional life through the experiences of two young Wampanoag sisters before European contact. As they cycle through the seasons, we absorb everything they experience, learn, and see. There are ceremonies such as those for the harvest, and spiritual beliefs, like thanking an animal for giving its life to sustain the people. There are customs like never taking too much; for instance, when the children pick strawberries, they walk by the first patches to ensure there will always be berries left, not just for others but for the birds. “They were taught this their entire lives,” writes Coombs. “It was just the natural thing to do.”
We discover how the Indigenous people fished, built houses, planted crops, and prepared food, including boiled bread made with cornmeal, hot water, and dried blueberries. We see how children were taught. One sister returns home with not much of a bounty, having eaten too many strawberries and stained her dress. Her mother thanks her and teases that perhaps next time, she should bring a smaller basket that will be easier to fill; she also offers to paint some designs on her daughter’s dress to match the strawberry stains. The girl laughs––“but she didn’t miss the point that the strawberry picking was done for the whole family, not just herself.”
Coombs writes in the introduction, “The story was created to relate traditional Wampanoag culture, beliefs, practices, and values based on our oral tradition and research done over many years. There are no written sources of these early times due to the process of colonization described in other parts of the book. An understanding of pre-contact life brings clarity to the impacts of colonization on Indigenous people.”
Coombs, a historian and educator, shares that her knowledge comes from living in a Wampanoag community and working with, speaking with, and reading books and materials by Indigenous people. She also was at Plimoth Plantation (now the Plimoth Patuxet Museums) for 30 years. “I worked in or was the director of the Wampanoag Indigenous Program. The main focus was our outdoor living history exhibit. We learned all the different processes, skills, technologies, and techniques of our ancestors. It was not just doing the mechanics; you had to learn all the cultural and spiritual aspects.” Coombs’ accumulated knowledge about the approach to building homes, planting, using tools, and making canoes, clothing, and baskets permeates the Indigenous traditional life narrative.
These chapters alternate with those about pre-colonial through post-colonial history, starting with the Doctrine of Discovery. This was a series of papal bulls issued from the time of the Crusades in the 1200s until 1493. They declared that non-Christians were the enemies and less than human. They argued that Christians had the right to invade and take the lands and resources of non-Christians and enslave them.
The Doctrine of Discovery paved the way for Christopher Columbus, hailed for “discovering” the “New World.” Coombs writes, “Indigenous people assert that lands already having millions of people living there cannot be ‘discovered’ by someone else. This effectively denies our origins and continued existence in our homelands in North, Central, and South America . . . Columbus enslaved thousands of Indigenous people throughout the Caribbean. He wanted them to find gold . . . When the people of the various islands did not, or could not, find gold to fill the quotas, they were subjected to mental, emotional, and physical torture and were maimed and mutilated.”
Coombs includes an excerpt from Columbus’ logbook in which he wrote about the Indigenous people from the island of Guanahani who came to greet him: “They ought to make good and skilled servants . . . I think they can easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion.” Here, as she does throughout the history chapters, Coombs embeds questions. She asks us, for instance, to consider the basis for Columbus’ assumption. “How did he come to determine the Guanahani had no religion? He had just stepped off the boat . . . He did not treat them with the respect offered equal human beings, but rather operated from his assumptions.”
The pre-Pilgrim period covers life-altering events, including massive epidemics, kidnapping, and enslavement that devastated Indigenous peoples of the region. Coombs shares that the Pilgrims were not only looking for religious freedom, as is commonly taught. “The Mayflower voyage was a financial endeavor paid for by the Merchant Adventurers. Their goals were to establish a colony, obtain riches of the land — furs, timber, and gold, were it to be found — and have the colony thrive so that the riches would keep flowing back to Europe. To get control of the land for these purposes, they had to dominate or annihilate Indigenous people.”
Coombs similarly teases out many more topics for a more nuanced understanding. Just two include the comparison of Wampanoag and Western European education and the complicated, shifting issue of land rights, looking at how the European/American concept of ownership disrupted traditional land uses and practices.
Although written with seventh graders in mind, this engaging book is essential for adults to gain a perspective on the ways Indigenous and European/American history is typically presented and interpreted.
“Colonization and the Wampanoag Story” garnered national attention in September when a citizen’s review committee at the Montgomery County Memorial Library in Texas, without the input of librarians, insisted that the nonfiction book be reclassified as fiction. The action prompted a national outcry from Indigenous citizens and those against book censorship. Coombs comments, “They’ve been trying to either erase, silence, or diminish us five million ways over the last 400 years, so this was just the latest iteration.” In October, the Montgomery County Commissioners Court ruled that the book be restored to the original nonfiction section. “I learned subsequently that it is the Library of Congress that decides what book fits in what category,” says Coombs.
In “Colonization and the Wampanoag Story,” Coombs writes, “You will read a lot of things you’ve never heard about before, and they are pretty tough things. But this is not about blame or making anyone feel guilty or bad . . . This is about readers gaining an understanding of what actually happened in the past. There are many wrongs in the past, but you can’t fix something until you know what it is. We can’t change what happened in the past, but we can decide to go forward in a better way where there is equality and equity for all people.”
“Colonization and the Wampanoag Story” by Linda Coombs. Crown Books for Young Readers, 2023. 260 pages. Available at Edgartown Books and Bunch of Grapes Bookstore.
