Great Island in Wellfleet is a beautiful pearl on the Cape Cod National Seashore’s necklace, the most dramatic of a handful of islands strung along Cape Cod Bay, linked by sandy strands.
At the head of the island, above the low mouth of the Herring River, a trail off a small parking lot leads past a flat tombstone where visitors leave talismans -- shells, pebbles, bits of yarn, pine cones, baby horseshoe crab skeletons. These mementoes frame the following etched words:
“Here lies an Indian woman, a Wampanoag, whose family and friends gave of themselves and their land that this great nation might grow.”
The idea that Indians “gave of themselves and their land that this great nation might grow” suggests a lot more free will and mutual cooperation than history chronicles, plus it seems the woman buried here lived well before this nation started growing.
But the story of how this grave came to be, told at Thanksgiving, says much about how our relationship to the First Light people, here for thousands of years, continues to evolve.
The bones buried below this marker are about 400 years old, meaning this woman could have been alive at the time of the Pilgrims’ arrival. They were uncovered in another part of Wellfleet, known as Indian Neck, in 1953, under two feet of quahog shells and sand.
She had been laid to rest curled, in a fetal position. The property’s owners, rather than ignoring or destroying the grave like so many have done, called the Wellfleet Historical Society for help. And so the bones were lifted out, kept intact -- then laid into an open box on a bed of sand, set for all to see in the group’s handsome home and museum on Main Street.
So they sat for more than 20 years. But by the mid-1970s, it was dawning on historians and archeologists that these kinds of displays were, to put it delicately, not appropriate. Native American tribes were raising consciousness, asking questions:
What if those bones were your ancestor’s remains? Would you want them dug out of the ground, plunked in an open public box somewhere for the enjoyment of casual visitors?
Helen Purcell, a passionate prime mover of the Wellfleet Historial Society who reached 100 years before her passing in 2020, recalled that the group meant no disrespect, it was just the way things were displayed in those days. Intent on rectifying any unintended insult, Purcell and the society turned to the Wampanoag tribal council in Mashpee for advice and counsel.
Tribal members advocated reburial, but the original site was private and unsuitable. The historical society then approached the National Seashore, which donated a new location; high ground at the beginning of the Great Island trails. The society paid for the stone and carved epitaph.
The bones were laid to rest once again on May 30, 1976, with more than 500 people convening for a ceremony at which Helen spoke.
“Indian woman,” she said, “we cannot restore you, like Lazarus, to life but we can release you from the indignities of exhumation and exhibition and return you to the elemental dignity of death. Free forever from the distractions of display, rest now in the sweet privacy of this grave.”
It was a gentle victory for more respectful treatment – although the sentiment carved into the stone still garners controversy.
