[For many up
here in New England, summer means a trip or twelve to the Cape—Cape Cod, that is (with no disrespect to
the beautiful Cape Ann). So this week, I’ll AmericanStudy five Cape Cod
stories—share your own summer favorite places and their stories for a
crowd-sourced weekend getaway, please!]
On what’s
complex and challenging about a historical rebellion, and what’s not.
In this long-ago
post on the early 19th century concept of “nullification” (a
concept that has
returned to our national conversations in recent monts), I noted that what
seems to differentiate John Calhoun’s proto-Confederate attempts to resist the
federal government from those of Cape Cod’s Mashpee Wampanoag
tribe and community is, to put it simply, our sympathies. That is, of
course to any thoughtful and knowledgable AmericanStudier a community like the
Mashpee Wampanoag tribe had far more legitimate grievances than did Calhoun’s
South Carolina (which along with its fellow Southern states had, I would argue,
been favored at every stage of the American founding, from the
Declaration to the Constitution and beyond). But whether legimitate
historical grievances are an argument for an entire community refusing to
follow state and federal law, as did the Mashpee during their Revolt of 1833-34—well,
that’s a different and more challenging question to be sure.
But there’s
another history and concept that’s also relevant to the Mashpee Revolt, and
that indeed does differentiate their situation from South Carolina’s: the
developing idea of tribal sovereignty.
Tribes like the Mashpee Wampanoag don’t just perceive themselves as sovereign
nations, separate from the United States in key ways; they have long been
treated as such by the U.S., including if not especially in its treaties and
laws. That the U.S. has forgotten, broken, and otherwise failed to live up to
those treaties and laws so consistently in no way undermines the concept of
tribal sovereignty; if anything, it makes it that much more important that the
tribes themselves emphasize and fight for their sovereign rights, as the Mashpee
Wampanoag did (successfully) in the 1830s. Moreover, the specifics of such
legal fights make a great deal of difference as well: the Mashpee Wampanoag
were struggling for the right not to practice and extend an abhorrent social
system like that of slavery (which may not have been the overt goal of
Calhoun’s 1830s nullifications, but was at the least foreshadowed
by that fight), but rather for their fundamental ability to control and
make a living on their own tribal land.
Remembering Cape
Cod’s Mashpee Revolt helps us engage with and better understand those complex
legal questions and histories, not only for Native Americans but for the nation
as a whole in the antebellum era. Yet it also does more than that. For one
thing, it gives us a starting point for better remembering the tragically short
but profoundly influential life and work of William
Apess, the itinerant minister and orator who
joined the Mashpee in their fight. And for another, related thing, it
reminds us of the presence and power of Native
American voices in this early 19th century moment. Too often,
our narratives of such histories focus solely or centrally on white allies and
advocates, in part because for many decades theirs were the only voices and
texts we had recovered. But while those voices are without question part of the
story, it’s vital that we see them for what they were—supporting players in an
unfolding drama that had at its heart, then
as always, Native American orators and activists, leaders and communities. Cape
Cod’s Mashpee Revolt offers a particularly clear and effective starting point
for remembering their struggles and successes.
Next Cape story
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Summer favorite places you’d highlight?
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