Indigenous Peoples' Day - At With Mystic Seaport Museum

Spend Indigenous Peoples’ Day immersing yourself in local Indigenous history and culture. In the morning enjoy the warmth of the hearth in the Buckingham-Hall House while Silvermoon LaRose from the Tomaquag Museum cooks and teaches about Indigenous seafood and harvest recipes. In the afternoon learn about Indigenous maritime history from Dr. Jason Mancini who will explain his process researching and contextualizing the anonymously published “Narragansett Chief” (1832). Following Dr. Mancini’s presentation, Silvermoon LaRose will offer her perspective and response before opening it up to an audience Q&A. More than nine million acres of Indian Country in southern New England and Long Island was reduced to less than 30,000 acres by the American Revolution. Europeans, through military and technological dominance, consolidated control not just over land, but also over legal and economic systems. Indians across the region, though they were widely perceived to be vanishing, adjusted in different ways to this rapidly changing world. One important and largely unseen shift involved the participation of Indian men in various forms of maritime labor – from shipbuilding to whaling. Thousands of Indians and those of Indian descent found work in customs districts such as New London, New Haven, Providence, New York, Sag Harbor, and New Bedford. Despite this, almost nothing is known about their lives and experiences at sea.