Faithful Bodies. Heather Miyano Kopelson
for assistance. Edward Winslow described a yearly redistribution among the Wampanoags in which “the Pnieses use to provoke the people to bestow much corne on the Sachim. To that end they appoint a certain time and place neere the Sachims dwelling, where the people bring many baskets of corne, and make a great stack thereof.” Although this event was seasonal, pniesok (warriors with proven control of significant amounts of manitou) directed the offerings and the formal interchanges between sachem and people, suggesting that the ritual had other-than-human resonances. Once the stacks of baskets were assembled, “the Pnieses stand ready to give thankes to the people on the Sachims behalfe.” Upon receiving the tribute, the sachem “is no lesse thankefull, bestowing many gifts” in return.28 Refusing to accept a proffered gift or express gratitude was an asocial attitude that, as William Wood recounted, made “an ungratefull person a double robber of a man” as doing so not only withheld courtesy but denied “his thankes which he might receive of another for the same proffered, or received kindnesse.”29 While a captive during King Philip’s War with an intertribal group of Narragansetts, Nipmucs, and Wampanoags, Mary Rowlandson did not understand this hierarchical reciprocity, and so did not see consistency in her captors’ punishments during her captivity when she tried to hoard food as well as when she begged food from individuals who were lower-ranking than Weetamoe, to whose household she belonged.30
“Most of the body remains to this day”
Although the parts of the nickómmo and other feasts most concretely detailed in English observers’ accounts were those in which humans interacted with each other, they also connected human participants to the crowded animate world around them, linking dancers and feastgoers to places with much manitou and to other-than-human persons. English observers feared the potency of these connections and communications because they viewed them as commerce with the devil. The combination of their fear, lack of understanding, and outsider status means that these narratives contain only hints of the full sense and consequence of the movement of bodies and the ritual ingestion of food performed at these rituals. However, a broader view of some general principles that ordered Algonquian perceptions of their bodies and their relation to the environment permits a clearer outline of these meanings.
Native space contained sacred places that linked to different parts of the cosmos, which for most southern Algonquians was divided into three: the upper or sky world; the earth or middle world; and the under domains, often associated with water. The common pot dealt with them all, as spiritual resources were part of what had to be shared among humans and other-than-humans. Because “spiritual” was not separated from “physical” or “material,” concrete actions taken to ensure survival aimed to be efficacious in what a Western perspective now splits into discrete realms. Acknowledging this intertwining and seamless flow between what Western cultures compartmentalize into separate concerns is not the same as relegating indigenous peoples to melt into the background of the landscape, communing in some intrinsic way with the plants and animals around them. For puritans and other Christians too, unseen influences and forces animated the world around them, but they were all oriented around an omnipotent God, either flowing from or acting against that entity. Religions in the Northeast and in the Caribbean lacked that singular central point of reference; it was relations between and among humans and other-than-human persons that were the focus, relations that crisscrossed boundaries between seen and unseen worlds.31
The act of propitiating other-than-humans was part of this naming of insider and outsider, as those relationships with spiritual force were key to a healthy community body. Living and eating together and all the activities that made them possible were what made the “lived space” of a Ninnimissinuok community.32 These exchanges maintained the health of the whole community as well as that of the individuals directly involved in the exchange. Activities necessary to physical survival such as hunting animals and collecting plants were imbued with spiritual meaning because manitou inhabited those living beings as well as the places where they might be caught or found.33 Beings rich with manitou transformed the very landscape. Wampanoags believed the culture hero Maushop, whom Narragansetts knew by the name Wétucks, to have created Nantucket Island off the coast of Massachusetts, as well as places like the Devil’s Bridge on Martha’s Vineyard. They knew that he created a rock formation on the Rhode Island coast when he discarded his wife Saconet or Squant and later turned her to stone. While still alive, she demanded a toll from all who passed by. After being turned to stone, her body became an important reference point. The English, either not understanding the significance of the rock formation—or precisely understanding it and wishing to destroy what they viewed as a focus for idolatry—broke off her arms and carried them away. Thomas Cooper, a Gay Head storykeeper who had learned the history from his predecessors, asserted the continuity of Squant’s existence since “most of the body remains to this day.” A white inhabitant of a nearby town recorded Cooper’s account in the early nineteenth century, creating a documentary presence to complement Squant’s topological one.34 This knowledge about place helped link community identity to specific features of the land and sea through the centuries, while also reminding Natives that the English had little consideration for Indian bodies.
Figure 2.2. Seventeenth-century wampum beads placed as grave goods in a Native interment near what is now Revere Beach, Massachusetts. (President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 78–17–10/14204, digital file 60740371)
The boundaries of physical bodies shared in the permeability between categories of human and other-than-human persons and were little more than perception. This attitude shows up in hogk, the Massachusett word for “body,” which means “that which covers a man or animal.” Rather than being an absolute separation or finite end to identity, the body was a mere covering for the living power or manitou that animated the person or animal.35 Crossing boundaries between spaces or states of being involved great power that could be dangerous, leading to proscriptions placed on menstruating and birthing women, as well as on warriors about to go into battle and the houses of the dead.36 When Algonquians slept, their inner self—or soul, as the English translated the concept—traveled outside the physical body to interact more closely with other-than-human persons who might convey spiritually significant messages. That experience was not always a positive one for the traveling essence of the human individual. Frightening or powerful dreams prompted the dreamer to discern their meaning through further communication with the unseen world or, as Roger Williams described it, “When they have had a bad Dreame, . . . they fall to prayer at all times of the night, especially early before day,” during the transition from night to day and dark to light.37
Healing practices were based in the ability to bring manitou to bear on the sickness at hand. To cure a sick patient, powwows worked to transcend the limits of their physical bodies as well as those of their patients to access spiritual power. William Wood recounted one cure he observed in which the powwow was “smiting his naked breast and thighs with such violence as if he were mad.” That violence may have served to weaken the bounds of the body in order to allow the powwow to cross that physical threshold and move into a trance state where he could more easily communicate with Hobbomock and lesser other-than-humans. Ministers and missionaries John Eliot and Thomas Mayhew disapprovingly noted, “The Pawwaws counted their Imps their Preservers, had them treasured up in their bodies, . . . who when they had done some notable Cure, would shew the Imp in the palm of his Hand to the Indians.”38 While they meant to emphasize the trickery of the powwow and what they termed witchcraft or diabolically inspired manipulations of the unseen world, their description reflects the Algonquian belief that human bodies might also harbor manitou-holding agencies, and that displaying them was a sign of the powwow’s ability.
Communal participation was another key aspect of the cure, not only by the presence of others, but by their vocal performance. After the sick person was brought to the powwow, “the rest of the Indians giving attentive audience” to the “imprecations and invocations, and . . . the violent expression of many a hideous bellowing and groaning” of the powwow, “all the auditors with one voice utter a short Canto.”39 The two cures that Matthew