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NARRATED BY CECILY MILLER
INTERVIEW WITH FARIES GRAY, SAGAMORE (WAR CHIEF), MASSACHUSETT TRIBE AT PONKAPOAG
In the course of learning about the plants of colonial Menotomy, we have been confronted with the suffering and devastating erasure of the original people, the Massachusett. They lived in what we now call Greater Boston, on the coast from Salem to Plymouth and inland west as far as Worcester, and their last great leader Squaw Sachem lived in Menotomy near the Mystic Lakes. The Massachusetts Bay Colony’s 1629 royal charter empowered English settlers to “to reduce or convert to submission the indigenous people of New England,” and the settlers did so. The Massachusett were forcibly removed to make their land – including their fertile planting fields and forests – available to English colonists.
Despite these losses, the Massachusett have not disappeared. They are still here. We honor their vision of the land as a place that rightfully shelters and sustains all who care for it. We asked Faries Gray, the Sagamore or War Chief of the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag, to share his perspective on his people’s history and relationship to plants.