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…for learners to be able to identify some considerations around what name to use for indigenous people in seventeenth-century Massachusetts and to evaluate the impact of the Massachusett language writing system.

1. It doesn’t seem as if many scholars have taken up Bragdon’s suggestion of using “Ninnimissinuok” for Native people in seventeenth-century Massachusetts. Here is Bragdon writing about this term (she starts her book with this discussion): “In this book I portray the indigenous people of the region now called southern New England as they lived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These people include the Pawtucket, Massachusett, Nipmuck, Pocumtuck, Narrgansett, Pokanoket, Niantic, Mohegan and Pequot, as well as the peoples of western Connecticut and Long Island (Map 1). My goal is to provide an account that is, as far as possible, consistent with the Native point of view and with Native voice. Hence, I often make use of the indigenous term, Ninnimissinuok, to refer to the people of this region. This term, a variation of the Narragansett word Ninnimissinnûwock, which means roughly ‘people,’ connotes familiarity and shared identity (Williams 1936:A3; Trumbull 1903:306), and thus avoids not only the awkwardness and inaccuracy of the use of multiple ‘tribal’ labels, but also the troublesome fact that these names were sometimes tags applied to the inhabitants of this region by others, including non-Natives” (xi).
   • What do you think are the advantages or disadvantages of using “Ninnimisinuok”? Do you have any thoughts about why scholars might not have taken up this term? What significance do you think the question of what term to use to describe seventeenth-century Massachusetts indigenous people has?
2. Some scholars think of literacy or a writing system as a tool of colonialism.  Jill Lepore writes about a Native person in seventeenth-century Massachusetts who learned how to read, “Literacy, however, was a special kind of marker, one that branded its possessor, perhaps most especially in his own eyes, as an Indian who had spent years and years with the English; his very ‘Indianness’ was thus called into question” and earlier she states, “Learning to read and write—and especially learning to read and write English—were among the very last steps on the path to cultural conversion” (498). What is your response to this? To what extent do you think literacy for Massachusett, Wampanoag, and other Native people was a way of becoming more “English”? Do you think that literacy was ever a way of becoming more “Native”? (you may not have enough historical information to make any conclusions, but you can do extra research, or suggest initial thoughts you have on this). How do you think having a written Massachusett language might have affected both the early Native and English people? What language group is Wampanoag a part of, and how does the fact that there are several written documents in Massachusett affect what we know about Native history today?  If you can, check out the Bragdon and Goddard book that compiles Native writings in Massachusett and read some of the documents!

Respond to these discussion questions (or other topics of your choosing, relating to the lectures) here: