Distancing

This chapter brings personal experience with history into focus by recounting interviews with passersby as they talk about Massasoit and what the statue means to them, and juxtaposing these accounts with the living history museum Plimoth Plantation and the Public Broadcasting Station "experiential history" series Colonial House. This chapter seeks to understand three related phenomenon: how people experience historical distance between the past and present; how people endeavour to close the distance through consuming history as experience; and the ways in which Native peoples force a reckoning with Indigenous perspectives in Plymouth-centered narratives. Massasoit statues outside of Plymouth offer the greatest cognitive and geographic distance, and therefore a "safe" way to wrestle with the discomfort involved in coming to terms with colonialism. But the place of Plymouth and presence of Native educators makes a difference for closing the distance. Since the first 1970 United American Indians of New England protests, viewers of Massasoit must engage more fully in the nation's history. Plimoth Plantation and Colonial House likewise work to close the distance between the past and present through personal experience. This chapter argues that Native educators and activists play a crucial role for closing the distance and pushing a reckoning with history.

Marketing

This chapter analyses the commodification of Massasoit over the long history of the project to commemorate the leader. Sculptor Cyrus Dallin's career coincided with major technological developments in metal casting, which made it possible to reproduce sculptures faster and cheaper. Indian statuary cast in bronze was a thriving business that appealed to individuals, institutions, and especially municipalities. The chapter begins with the fund-raising efforts of the Improved Order of Red Men and move to the present-day marketing of Massasoit in every size and form, from small charms to statuettes, and sold in tourist shops, fine art galleries, and online auctions. All of these commodified replicas are imbedded in the creation of Plymouth as a popular tourist destination that peddles itself as the origins of the nation. This story mobile - far beyond and outside of Plymouth - through the sale and acquisition of Massasoit products.

Introduction

This chapter explains the connection between monuments and the stories about the past they convey to viewers over time. While monuments are considered static and place-bound, this statue of the Massasoit became mobile in numerous ways: in stories that travel with the viewer; as small replicas carried away as souvenirs or purchased as art across the country and the world; and in full-sized casts installed in diverse public settings in the Midwest and West. This chapter argues that the fact that the statue represents a Native leader with a connection to the story of the first Thanksgiving makes its mobility uniquely revealing of the fraught historical memory of colonialism in the U.S. This chapter introduces the argument that Wampanoag and other Native peoples have long resisted, challenged, and refigured the popular celebratory story of peaceful colonization often attached to the figure of the Massasoit. This chapter also introduces the history of the Thanksgiving myth, recounts Wampanoag and English settler relations, explains the popular interest in Indian statuary, and provides background on the public art movement that lead to the commission of the Massasoit statue.

Epilogue

This concluding essay considers how collective memory is shaped and potentially re-shaped. It argues that the monument serves as a site for intervention, offering the opportunity to disrupt settler memory and install an alternative temporal consciousness that does not celebrate colonial settlement (i.e. the commemoration of the landing of the Mayflower as the start, and the Thanksgiving myth as the continuing ritual of peaceful colonization). The present moment arguable offers great potential for changing collective memory as public debates rage across the country over the removal of monuments to the Confederacy. Yet confronting the violence and on-going structures of colonialism pose particular challenges. Wampanoag educators are leaders in finding creative and effective ways to directly confront the painful history of settler colonialism.

Staging

This chapter follows Massasoit through eighty years of unveilings and dedication ceremonies across diverse locations to interrogate how the national narrative originally imagined by the Improved Order of Red Men was staged and how audiences received it in Plymouth and locations far away from New England. The interplay between the intended narrative of national belonging and regional/local ramifications of the statue's installation is noted, and indigenous perspectives are included. Even after the unveiling ceremonies in each locale and era (Plymouth in 1921, Salt Lake City in 1922 and 1959, and Evergreen Park, Kansas City, Spokane, and Provo in late 1970s), the statue continued to accumulate meaning for viewers. This chapter argues that Massasoit served as a stage (or staging ground) for public discussions over cultural appropriation and the place of Native people in national and local historical consciousness.

Casting

This chapter takes up the cast of characters involved in setting the story of peaceful colonization in motion: the sculptor Cyrus Dallin and his engagement with the Massasoit in fashioning and casting Massasoit; the Improved Order of Red Men and the Massasoit Memorial Association in their imaginings of the Massasoit's role in creating the nation; and the Pilgrim Society, which provided the site for the original installation within a curated memorial landscape in Plymouth. This chapter argues that those who commissioned the original statue in Plymouth believed that men could prove their patriotism by possessing and appropriating Indians. When the statue was copied and took up residence in various locations, it continued to serve a related purpose in these different places over time. The statue filled the need in American popular culture for an innocent and innocuous reframing of the nation's founding principles of taking and profiting from Indigenous people.

Prologue

This introductory chapter discusses the book's origins and the authors' research experiences in Plymouth, Utah, and Kansas City. It also introduces the concept of mobility in Wampanoag culture and history, noting that Wampanoag people have long travelled and made connections in surprising ways and places - historically on whaling ships and more recently on mishoonash (dugout canoes) journeys. This section then discusses contemporary debates over the removal of monuments erected during the Jim Crow era, while also widening this debate to include monuments to settler colonialism.