Cape Cod

by William Martin

  Mashpee took Yankee surnames from white overseers, Hispanic names from Cape Verde Islanders, German names from Hessian prisoners who liked Mashpee enough that they stayed on after the Revolution, and African blood from the Cape Verdeans and runaway slaves.

  Of course, the Indian population of Cape Cod had needed new blood, or it might have disappeared entirely.

  There were perhaps two thousand Indians living on Cape Cod when the Pilgrims arrived. No one knew for certain. But white diseases had already begun their work on the naive immune systems of the Native American. Within a century and a half, there were only five hundred adult Indians on Cape Cod. Their ancestors had sold most of their lands for kettles and English hoes, then moved to reservations, known as plantations, or to Praying Towns where well-meaning ministers taught of the white god who sent diseases in his wrath and took them away in his mercy.

  Mashpee was the first and largest of the plantations. By 1763, it was the only one left. And considering how poorly white overseers had done by the Indians of Cape Cod, the Mashpee Wampanoags petitioned the king of England for self-government. The king granted the request, a rare demonstration of good judgment. But when the thirteen colonies could not convince the king to grant them the same thing a few years later, dozens of Mashpee men joined the rebellion, perhaps on the principle that more freedom was always better than less. Most of them died. Many of their widows married Hessians.

  But their sacrifice did Mashpee no good, because after the Revolution, the state of Massachusetts put overseers in charge of the town once more. Some served well. Others enriched themselves at the expense of the Indians. When they left Mashpee in 1834, they left it in poverty.

  For over a century, the world left Mashpee alone, and Mashpee got along just fine. It was the Indian town, a bad address, in spite of the trout ponds, salt marshes, and fine south-facing beaches. Then, in the 1960s, developers discovered the town and its undervalued land and began to buy. They built condos in the pine woods and golf courses near the beaches. They closed off ancient fishing grounds. They gained political power. The Wampanoags, seeing their town wrested from them, brought suit to have open lands entrusted to the tribe. And an idealistic young lawyer named Jimmy Little joined the fight to retain something of his people’s past.

  When the case was heard in 1977, every real estate developer who could draw breath held it and waited.

  “They’re just after somethin’ for nothin’,” Blue Bigelow had announced. “They’re not real Indians, anyway. Just Mo-nigs.”

  “What’s a Mo-nig?” Geoff had asked.

  “Mo’ nigger than Indian.”

  In subtler language, this theme was developed by attorneys who fought the suit. And they won. Mashpee boomed. Control of the Board of Selectmen passed to white newcomers, and the three hundred Wampanoags of Mashpee couldn’t do much about it.

  Some, like Massy Ritter, didn’t care. They fished a little, drank a little, and played sullen with outsiders, just as they always had. Others, like Jimmy, moved on to make their way in the world. And then there was leathery old Ma, who could still tell you about Kautantowit, Geesukquand the Sun Spirit, Maushop the Giant, all the spirits of sky and earth.

  Six days a week, she ran a deep-sea fishing charter out of Falmouth. On the seventh, this member of the Mashpee Tribal Council took off her baseball cap, put on her deerskins and beaded headband, and educated the tourists about the people who had greeted the Pilgrims. And what better place to do it than in the town of Bourne, at the birthplace of American business?

  The Aptucxet site had been discovered in a pasture around 1850. There was nothing left of the building, nor much interest in it then, because knowing the history of the land was less important than wresting a living from it. But in 1920, tercentenary of the Pilgrims’ landing, the Bourne Historical Society raised money to construct a replica on the ancient foundation. By then, the tourists had found Cape Cod, and Cape Codders had begun to sense that after the beaches and boat harbors, history might be their best drawing card.

  The Aptucxet replica perched on the banks of what had once been a tidal river and was now the widest canal in the world. While twentieth-century ships flowed by, you could feel the pull of the past at Aptucxet.

  That was why Geoff liked it. That was why he liked the whole Cape. History had survived in the gentle curves of Route 6A, in the magisterial sweep of the Great Beach, even in the junk that burned-out business executives sold when they bought captains’ houses and put up Antique signs. Of course, for every 6A curve there was a neon-and-macadam mile of Route 28. And for every old house, there was a strip mall.

  But on the Cape, you could still find the connections, forge the links with a past that made you feel rooted to the land and the people who had lived on it, then integrate your vision with the surroundings. That was how Geoff tried to work at the drafting table, and it was a good way to live: find the connections, put it all together, die happy.

  And what better link with Cape Cod’s past could there be than Indians at Aptucxet?

  “Take some literature, Geoff.” Ma Little pointed to a table covered with pamphlets. “Wampanoag youth programs, unemployment, success stories like Jimmy Little, Wall Street Lawyer.”

  Ma was smiling, but Geoff heard a little resentment, a little disappointment. Her son came back every summer and did pro bono work for the tribe, but that didn’t change the fact that one of the best and brightest had moved away.

  “Geoff needs your expertise on an old Cape myth,” said Jimmy.

  “I’m your gal. You want to know about Maushop the Giant, or—say, how’s that feisty old Rake Hilyard?”

  “Yammerin’ away about the log of the Mayflower,” said Jimmy. “Ever heard of it?”

  “No, but that don’t mean it don’t exist.”

  “We’re trying to figure out how the log could stop the development at Jack’s Island,” said Geoff.

  “I thought there was a commission for that now,” said Massy.

  “There’s a commission for everything,” said Jimmy. “But you can’t stop development. We learned that in 1977. If you don’t want the bad guys to do it, you help the good guys. The world’s changing.”

  Ma folded her arms, and raised her chin. “Changin’ too damn fast.”

  “You’ve never heard a legend about a log?” asked Geoff.

  “Ma says there’s a legend for everything.” Massy took a surf caster from under the pamphlet table. “Then she starts tellin’ one. That’s when I go fishing.”

  “A legend for everything.” Ma watched Massy amble off toward the canal, then turned an eye onto Geoff. “Are you using a legend as an excuse to avoid something?”

  Geoff could never tell if she was really mad or just theatrical. It was one of the reasons he liked her. “I’m not sure what I’m doing, Ma.”

  She grunted at that, then grabbed Geoff’s arm in one hand and Jimmy’s in the other and dragged them into the trading post.

  There were two large rooms on the first floor, with low ceilings and pine walls. In the smaller room, the curator, dressed like a seventeenth-century Englishwoman, was giving a tour of the artifact collection. But the main room looked as it might have on a day in the 1620s, and it gave Geoff a strange chill to stand there.

  Barrels of corn, flour, and salt were piled in one corner. A musket stood in another corner. A stew pot hung in the fireplace. Deerskins lay beside the scale. And the board was set with wooden bowls and spoons, as though the proprietor would soon be coming in for dinner.

  “Take a look at this,” said Ma.

  A large square-cut piece of granite, unadorned and unlabeled, sat on the floor by the staircase. It was marked with four large letters and perhaps a dozen smaller letters beneath them.

  “The Bourne Stone.” Geoff had heard about it.

  “Stepping-stone of the First Indian Church in Bournedale, built in 1682.”

  Jimmy said, “What does this have to do—”

  Ma raised a finger to her lips. Shu
t up and listen. “It’s made of granite, rare on Cape Cod.”

  “There are glacial erratics all over,” said Geoff.

  “This stone was found like this. Cut, squared, inscribed. The Indians dragged it to the meeting house, but set it writing-side down. They thought the letters were devil markings.”

  “Then why use it at all?” asked Jimmy.

  Ma pretended not to hear that. “There’s not an Indian today who can tell you what these letters mean.”

  “No Egyptian can tell you what the hieroglyphics mean,” laughed Jimmy. “So what?”

  “A Harvard professor says the writin’ is Iberian—like Spanish—for ‘A proclamation. Do not deface. By this, Hanno takes possession.’ An Iberian named Hanno may have been here five centuries before Christ’s birth.”

  “Who believes that?” asked Jimmy.

  “Well… some do, Mr. Wall Street Lawyer,” she answered with a defensive little catch in her voice. “And others believe it’s Scandinavian.”

  “The Vikings?” asked Geoff.

  “A Swedish tourist said they used stones like this for boundaries all over Scandinavia.”

  “There’s evidence for you,” said Jimmy.

  “If this stone proves that someone was here before Columbus,” Geoff asked, “why isn’t it one of the most important finds of the century?”

  “Because these are just Wampanoag ideograms, and there’s no one left to read them.” Jimmy went to the fireplace and dipped his finger in the stew pot.

  Geoff studied the strange angular lettering on the stone. There was something vaguely familiar in the graffiti. But that was the point. Legends had many ancestors. Nothing could be categorical. Maybe there was a log, maybe not. A wise damn Indian to answer a legend with legend.

  Ma gave him a little wink, as if she knew that he knew what she was telling him. “The Wampanoags have legends about how Maushop made the Cape, but the whites say it was God or a glacier. And the whites have legends about who discovered America”—she nodded toward the rock—“but the Indians know it was discovered before the whites got here. Legends answer the hard questions.”

  “With the wrong answers.” Jimmy looked at Geoff. “Don’t give up professional fees and land sales for a legend.”

  “I raised a cynic,” said Ma.

  “I grew into one.”

  “A cynic who counsels his friends to chew up Mother Earth because it don’t matter no more.”

  Jimmy put on his sunglasses. “The world’s changing.”

  Mother and son were at each other again. That hadn’t changed in years. But over the door was something new—a harpoon, and maybe a joke to cut the tension.

  “Hey, Ma,” said Geoff. “Why don’t you stick him with this?”

  “I’d like to.” Ma came over. “They say the first man to work here went whale hunting later on. We don’t know who he was, but I’ll bet you he had more gumption than men today.”

  “Is this his harpoon?”

  “It’s a symbol of gumption. That’s what you have when you don’t accept what is.” Ma touched the metal. “Some say it takes gumption to stop the world from changin’. Some say it’s the ones with gumption who do the changin’. My boy’s made up his mind on it. Where do you stand?”

  “On my own two feet” was the answer he gave. And the commission from the Bigelows would keep him there. Independent, well off, able to work and support his family.

  “Right in the middle” was the answer that went through his head. He loved Jack’s Island just as it was. And what if Rake was doing more than spinning some legend to give himself confidence in the future? What if there really was a log?

  More questions. This hadn’t gone as he had expected. All right. Janice would understand if he dug a bit deeper, for peace of mind. She would have to.

  ii.

  When Geoff Hilyard called, Carolyn Hallissey told her secretary she could see him on Wednesday.

  Then she ordered the file the detective agency had prepared on the major players in the Mayflower log business.

  She scanned the vitals—height, weight, years married, ages of children—and read the interview with Geoff’s former boss: “As smart as anybody here. But thought he was getting mundane projects—housing developments and rehabs—while his contemporaries did glamour stuff, skyscrapers and all. We gave him houses because he was good at them. So one day he just left. A lot of it had to do with his independence. I don’t think he had ever been happy in a big firm.” A loner with ambition. A helpful insight.

  Then she read his financial information: fifty thousand in savings, just enough to live on for a year, a small IRA, mortgages on two houses, loans on a new Plymouth Voyager and a twenty-three-foot Grady White with an oil-injected Yamaha engine.

  Someone—either Carolyn’s boss or the detective—had written, “Like in-laws, mortgaged up the ying-yang. Unlike them, some liquid assets. Will probably go for the deal.”

  She closed the folder. She didn’t care about the deal. Her job was to find out what he knew about the log… if it existed.

  iii.

  Janice was in no mood to understand what Geoff was after, nor was she in a mood to finish what they had started that morning. Geoff knew the night was lost when he told her he still had questions about Jack’s Island and the log.

  “Did you talk to Rake again?”

  “He wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “Then forget it.” She turned her back in bed and curled herself into a ball.

  But Geoff kept talking. About harpoons and whales. Not exactly pillow talk, and not very topical. He was looking for connections. “They say Jack Hilyard was a whaler.”

  Janice twitched herself into the mattress like a dog tamping down the grass.

  “He chased them in open boats and flensed stranders on the beach.”

  “Hilyards… always chasing something,” she muttered.

  That was a connection he would not dispute. “We used to kill them; now we try to save them.” He listened to the wind chimes playing in one of the apple trees by the door. He felt the sea breeze pushing in through the windows. “The Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown has a call list of volunteer whale savers. They help push pilot whales off the beach, cut humpbacks out of nets. I may join up.”

  “You do that, Geoff.” She mixed annoyance and sleepiness in her voice, like a child nodding off to avoid something troubling. “Save the whales.”

  “Save them… hunt them… either way, you’re just trying to be part of something greater.”

  She lifted her head off the pillow and looked at him. “You save the whales. Let Rake save the log. I’ll save the family. Then we’ll see who ends up as part of something greater.” Then she went to sleep.

  And Geoff dreamed of whales.

  CHAPTER 12

  October 1650

  Papists Come to Plymouth

  “We got us a big one, lads. Humpback for certain.” There was no knowing the mind of a hungry whale, but Jack Hilyard had been watching a cloud of gulls, and from their motion had plotted the beast’s progress halfway across the bay. “He spouts black blood afore sundown.”

  It was autumn, and for Jack, the high time had come, when the southwesterlies lingered like a maiden’s kiss on the land, when the blue water rolled in long, gentle swells, when the spouts blew up like little silver clouds above the bay.

  His son Jonathan pulled at the first oar. Beyond him was a woman dressed as a man, a strong woman with big hands and a face marked by the scars of the pox… Amapoo. Burly, black-bearded Christopher sat forward of her. And in the harpooneer’s seat, wearing a necklace of whales’ teeth and a blue frock over his breechclout, sat the Indian called Autie.

  “Humpback sink when dead,” he said. “Better chase onto flats.”

  “Thou just worry ’bout the dart.”

  “Last time, me dart good, humpback sink.” Autie, who still preferred to be called Autumnsquam, had learned many English words. A smart Indian had to, because the English
used words like weapons.

  It had been six years since the whites came to Nauset and asked to live on the land. They had given some good things—knives and copper, warm blankets, iron kettles, colored beads—and the Nausets had said yes, the white men could live there.

  But when the Nausets tried to hunt in the places they had always hunted, the whites told them they could hunt no more. The Nausets answered that they could not be kept from their land. They were part of it and it was part of them. But the whites pointed to papers that the Nausets had marked and said the Nausets had sold them the land, and “sold” meant they could never use it again.

  This “sold,” thought Autumnsquam, was a word more killing than a gun.

  “Thou struck deep, but not deep enough,” said Jack. “Now, thou bloody heathen, now’s a chance to redeem thyself.”

  “Redeem.” The worst weapon-word. They talked of a redeemer, the Son of God, sent to earth to die for men’s sins, before men had even committed them. What kind of god was this, who killed his own son because he was mad at sinful men? Some Nausets had accepted this strange story because the English sent good men like Simeon Bigelow to teach it. They promised that if the Nausets accepted the Jesus God Ghost, the Nausets would be accepted by the whites now flooding the land.

  Autumnsquam accepted nothing. He believed in Kautantowit and the spirits of the sky and the earth. But he could throw a harpoon through the eye of a needle, so the Hilyards accepted him, no matter what he believed.

  The Hilyards were the best whites to buy Nauset land. They traded fair and paid him a fair share of every whale they slaughtered. And in this New World a Nauset could buy much for his people with a fair share. So when Autumnsquam prayed to Kautantowit for the uprising that would drive the whites into the sea, he prayed also that the Hilyards would be spared.