Cape Cod DAR To Honor 400th Anniversary Of The Mayflower

Press release from Cape Cod DAR:

Dec. 7, 2020

The Captain Joshua Gray-Jonathan Hatch Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution, located on Cape Cod, had a strong desire to honor the 400th Mayflower Anniversary. Our goal was to establish a meaningful memorial to both the English passengers who arrived on the Mayflower and the Native Peoples who lived on Cape Cod.

Patty Donohoe, a member of DAR and an archivist at the 1869 Schoolhouse Museum, let our chapter know that the Eastham Historical Society was in the process of designing such an exhibit, and asked if we would like to get involved. We said "Yes!"

A grant of $1,000 was initially made for a museum-quality display case. Tribal artifacts were uncovered on the Cape at the 1869 Schoolhouse Museum in Eastham, Massachusetts. Upon examination of the 533 artifacts it was determined that many items actually pre-dated the Native American tribes and were over 10,000 years old! Thus, the exhibit was named to include all "First Peoples of Cape Cod". An additional grant of $1,000 was made to fund the cost of an archaeologist to document the archival items.

Archeologist Dan Zoto was tasked with analyzing the extensive collection of artifacts in our museum exhibit. His survey of the stone artifacts identified pieces from as far back as 9,500 to 10,000 years ago, including the Henry R. Guild collection that contained 48 artifacts, ranging from 3,500 years ago to the early 17th century.

One of the collections was found to contain grave goods — items buried with a body. Zoto confirmed through documentation that the collector who gathered them had excavated at a Native American burial site in the 1930s.

“With that information, we reached out to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and informed them of our discoveries, and they were in the loop from then on,” said Zoto. “Eventually those artifacts will be given back to the tribe, which I think is important.”

In addition, our DAR Chapter gave a grant of $1,000 to the Wampanoag Native American Tribe to reprint 14 copies of the Algonquian Language Dictionaries. The text will be used by Tribal Elders to instruct youth in their native Natick Dialect language, which has been all but lost over the last few generations.

These two initiatives by the CapeCodDAR serve to preserve significant national history in honor of the Mayflower 400th Anniversary.

Videos of the exhibit and Dan Zoto’s presentation can be found on the CapeCodDAR YouTube page, as well as the Eastham Historical Society YouTube page.

CapeCodDAR can be contacted at capecoddar@gmail.com, or you can visit our website (www.capecoddar.com), and find us on social media with the handle CapeCodDAR.

This press release was produced by Cape Cod DAR. The views expressed here are the author's own.