Native Voices
Imagine that you are at home where you live with your family and extended family.
You have 100-plus acres of land to roam and to hunt freely without anyone bothering you.
From time to time, people stop by to sell odds and ends to your family, but nobody ever stays more than a day.
Then, one crisp autumn day, around 50 families camp on your land.
They don't leave.
What would you do?
You could talk to the people calmly and tell them that this is your property and they must leave.
Or, you could take your gun (or weapon of choice) and yell at the people to leave.
That is what happened to the Wampanoag Nation.
They were a highly functioning society who were native to the land for many years before the English came and settled on their land.
Neither talking peacefully nor fighting hostilely gave back the Native Americans what was theirs.
You have read about the characteristics of Native American writers.
In this lesson, you will meet the governor of the New World and read detailed accounts of the lives of the colonists in William Bradford's book Of Plymouth Plantation.
You will now look at the colonists' point of view in 1620.