Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry digs into various archives to find photos of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.

Here is a look at the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s past with some AI enhanced photo features gathered from newspaper clips and archives. The “People of the First Light” are a federally recognized tribe located in Mashpee, Massachusetts, land their people have inhabited for 12,000 years.

1929: Powwow on Cape Cod

Here is a photo from that event entitled “Maiden Indians at Mashpee Powwow,” featuring (from left to right): Hazel Haynes, Gertrude Haynes, Cecilia Haynes, Laura Helme, Wyoma Coombs, Evangaline Coombs, Lillian Hammond, and Harriet C. Haynes.

1934: Mashpee Indians Hail Curley as Governor

From the scrapbook collection of Gov. James C. Curley comes this photo from a Boston newspaper, showing the former Mayor Curley in ceremonial headdress after he was honored by the members of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. In this photo we see (from left to right): Chief Hiacoomis, aka Oakes Agnus Coombs Jr. (1854-1940), born to Oakes Angus Coombs Sr. and Dinah (Amos) Coombs; James C. Curley; and Chief Wildhorse, aka Clinton Mye Haynes (1894-1966), son of John Haynes and Harriet “Hattie” Gardner (Whiting) Haynes.

1941: A Hole-y War on Donut Hole Origin! Chief High Eagle vs. Captain Crockett

Featured in this photo is Chief High Eagle, leader of the Wampanoag Tribe in Mashpee, who had a friendly battle with Capt. Fred Crockett over the genesis of the donut hole at the Gotham Convention, which was hosting the National Dunking Association. From left to right: Henry Ellis, Dr. Charles Funk, Fred Crockett, and Chief High Eagle.

The Patriot Ledger had the skinny on this drama, but it was all in good humor.

This article reports:

By a vote of three to one, the National Dunking Association at its convention at the Hotel Astor, New York, settled the fame securely of Capt. Gregory Crockett, Camden, Me., skipper of clipper ships, who is buried at the cemetery of the Sailors’ Snug Harbor in Germantown.

After Captain Crockett’s spirit had rested in contentment for years, happy in his culinary achievement – the inventing of the hole in the doughnut for posterity – what happened? Why, an impostor, a Chief High Eagle, a Mashpee Indian, was presented by a Hyannis attorney, Henry Ellis [see his profile next], who claimed that the Indian’s grandmother had told him the story of the doughnut-hole invention.

According to their doughy concoction, about 1660 an Indian interrupted a Cape Cod woman settler as she was dropping fried cakes into a kettle of fat. The Indian released a speeding arrow which pierced the cake in the woman’s hand and presto the hole in the doughnut.

1947: Outlander Legislator to Boss Indian Braves

What a character! In 1947 Henry A. Ellis of New Bedford offered to serve as leader of the Wampanoag Tribe.

This article reports:

Rep. Henry A. Ellis, New Bedford lawyer, who had a grandmother whose grandfather was a full-blooded Wampanoag Indian, stood ready tonight to assume the mantel of tribal chieftain, but it [was] known it would have to be strictly in an “advisory capacity.”

As Indians go, Ellis proudly boasts of his lineage, despite the fact that some braves hereabouts consider he has only a teaspoonful of Wampanoag blood in his system at this point.

Ellis’ nomination was purely by consensus, it seems, but he’s willing to take a whirl at the job Chief Wild Horse (Clinton M. Hayes) walked out on after 17 years’ “thankless” service and with typical Indian brevity announced “I’m through.”

1950s: Jonas Snack Bar, South Cape Beach

This photo of Ernestine Peters and Mary Hinds, both of Mashpee, was taken before the 1954 hurricane that destroyed Jonas Snack Bar. It was featured in the 125th Anniversary of Mashpee, Massachusetts, a pictorial history by Rosemary H. Burns, edited by Ann Whitlow.

1964: First Indian Bible Printed in Cambridge Now 3 Centuries Old

In 1964 the Boston Record American published a photo of Rev. Dr. Larence Almond, his daughter Priscilla, and Chief of the Mashpee Indians Earl H. Mills, “Chief Flying Eagle,” one of the descendants of the Plymouth tribe.

This photo accompanied the following article.

According to the article, the Mashpee and Vineyard Indians, along with the Massachusetts Bible Society, were celebrating the 300th anniversary of the first Indian Bible (known as the John Eliot Bible) printed in the Western Hemisphere. Through the efforts of Rev. John Eliot, aka “Apostle of the Indians,” and his translator Job Nesutan/Nesuton, a 1,000-page Bible was written in the Algonquian language. It took over 40 years to produce the final version.

There were two separate printings, one in 1664 and the second in 1686. The John Eliot Bible remained in use on Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod into the 1700s.

Here is a photo from a 1964 gathering to honor Rev. John Eliot, Apostle of the Indians, at the Old Mashpee Meeting House. More photos and information of this event, as well as much more history, is in Earl H. Mills Sr.’s book, Talking with the Elders of Mashpee: Memories of Earl H. Mills Sr.

In this photo we see, from left to right: Rev. Frederick R. Nagle; Mable Avant, aka “Nokomis” (meaning “grandmother”), a cultural leader for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and instrumental in preserving tribal traditions; Louis Webquish, aka “Leaping Deer,” a prominent leader and Supreme Medicine Man of the Wampanoag Tribal Council; Helen Attaquin, an Aquinnah Wampanoag educator and curator from Martha’s Vineyard who was a pioneer in developing the Native American Studies program at Plimoth Patuxet Museums; and Rev. Lawrence F. Almond.

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Note on the header image: Ousamequin, or “Massasoit” (Wampanoag term for “Great Sachem”) and Governor John Carver smoking a ceremonial pipe at Plymouth Colony in 1621. Credit: Sutro Library; Wikimedia Commons. [052825]

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