Wampanoag Indians
The first human beings to live here did not arrive by sea. In all likelihood they came on foot from the south, southwest, and east, perhaps following caribou or other game up the river valleys across the then wide coastal plain. These people, known as Paleoindians, arrived at least 9,000 years ago. Little is known about them, but they appear to have been a nomadic people, hunting and gathering in small groups. The earliest period represented by a variety of archeological sites is 3,000 to 6,000 BP (Before Present). An archeological site uncovered recently by the ocean at Coast Guard Beach suggests more permanent settlements. This site has been carbon-dated to more than 2,000 BP, and contains post holes indicative of shelter construction. These early Native Americans created chipped stone tools, fished in kettle ponds, and likely wintered in the Cape’s coniferous woodlands. By the early 1600s American Indians used or inhabited all the lands now encompassed by Cape Cod National Seashore. These Wampanoags lived in 6 villages along the creeks and bays from Chatham to Wellfleet, relying on both the land and sea for food. When French explorer Samuel de Champlain visited Cape Cod in 1605 and 1606, he noted that villagers in what became Eastham and Chatham were raising corn, beans, squash, and tobacco. They tilled their fields with wooden spades after burning off the vegetation. They used crabs as fertilizer but ate clams, quahogs, oysters, and other shellfish. Champlain noted that the Monomoy band at Stage Harbor in Chatham stored corn in grass sacks buried 5 to 6 feet in the sand. He thought they were better fishermen and farmers than hunters. The Wampanoags lived in domed shelters (below), which consisted of a frame of saplings bent into semicircles. These semicircles were linked by circles of saplings running parallel to the ground. The Indians covered the frames with grass, reeds, and bark and left a large hole in the roofs so smoke could escape from fires in a stone-lined pit in the center. The dwellings were not clustered but separated by cultivated fields.
Native Americans broil fish in this Theodore de Bry 1590 engraving (below) of a John White watercolor. Samuel de Champlain’s 1606 map (below right) of Chatham’s Stage Harbor area, which he called Port Fortune, shows Wampanoags attacking the French upon learning that they intended to settle there. The French had stayed in the harbor for 2 weeks drying out their ship and repairing its rudder.
Henry Botkin’s early 20th-century painting depicts the Wampanoags and Pilgrims signing a treaty of friendship.
Pilgrims First Landing
The Mayflower Pilgrims settled in Plymouth—but only after rejecting Cape Cod as unsuitable. On November 9, 1620, these emigrants from England sighted the Cape, the first land they had seen in the 2 months since they left Holland. Though they had intended to continue south and settle in the Hudson River area, they decided, because of treacherous waters off the Cape, to stay. They sailed around the northern end of the Cape, set anchor off what became known as Provincetown, and drew up the “Mayflower Compact,” an agreement by which the group of 102, a bare majority of whom were Pilgrims, would govern themselves. During the next month 3 different small groups made “discoveries” of the area. They found a freshwater spring in the Truro area, encountered a few Indians, and discovered several baskets of Indian corn buried on a hill near the Pamet River. On December 6 a group of 19 men led by Myles Standish left the Mayflower in a shallop, or small boat, camped for the night in Eastham, and crossed Cape Cod Bay to the mainland. They decided this would be a good place to settle and returned to the ship. On December 16, the Mayflower dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor, and the story of a new English settlement in the New World began. A few passengers and their offspring later settled in the Cape’s Eastham area.
The Mayflower, a 90-foot square-rigger, left England on August 15, 1620, with a smaller vessel called the Speedwell. Both vessels carried English exiles from Holland and England, but the leaky Speedwell caused two aborted departures. An overcrowded Mayflower finally left the docks on September 6, making the arduous Atlantic crossing in a sluggish 65 days.