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Introduction: Epenow's Lessons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2010

David J. Silverman
Affiliation:
George Washington University, Washington DC
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Summary

Epenow's pulse must have quickened when he caught the first scent of pine forest drifting eastward from a land still out of view but foremost on his mind. Just days later the vessel carrying him from England approached the Maine shoreline and then plied southward past Massachusetts Bay into waters that crashed against the sand dune frame of his Wampanoag people's territory. The power of the moment would have unleashed pent up heartache and fury in a weaker man, but mastering his emotions had brought Epenow this far and he was not about to abandon the course. Patiently, he endured the long last stage of his journey around Cape Cod and the treacherous Nantucket shoals, and finally toward the island of Noepe, his home. It had been three years since a fateful day in 1611 when Captain Edward Harlow abducted Epenow from the New England coast and carried him across the ocean into an adventure bordering on the surreal. Once in London, Epenow's captors shuttled him from place to place exhibiting him as “a wonder” before gawking crowds, a humiliation suffered by dozens and perhaps hundreds of other kidnapped Indians during the previous century. For Epenow, however, the city was on show with its throngs of people and livestock jamming the streets, the abject poor begging at the heels of their ornately clad “betters,” and a whirling commerce in goods from nearly every corner of the globe, all in the shadow of mighty architecture sponsored by England's church and state.

Type
Chapter
Information
Faith and Boundaries
Colonists, Christianity, and Community among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha's Vineyard, 1600–1871
, pp. 1 - 15
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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