Paomet

Paomet
The lands of the Paomet (top right) and neighboring tribes prior to 1620.
Total population
Extinct as a tribe
Regions with significant populations
United States ( Massachusetts)
Languages
Wôpanâak
Religion
Unknown
Related ethnic groups
Other Nauset groups

The Paomet (also anglicized as Pamet, Paomett, or Payomet)[Note 1] were a Native American group belonging to the larger Nauset tribe.[1] They inhabited the region near living near the Pamet River in what is now Barnstable County, Massachusetts.[2]

History

Though not a part of the Wampanoag confederacy, the Nauset were affiliated with the group and at times deferred to the authority of the Wampanoag sachem.[3] Most of the known history of the Paomet comes from accounts by English settlers in the 17th century and from archeological research.

Interactions with the Mayflower settlers

In 1620 a party of English pilgrims from the Mayflower led by military officer Captain Myles Standish sighted a group of natives consisting of five or six people and a dog, likely the Paomet, on the shores of Cape Cod.[4]

The Mayflower scouting party later discovered evidence of habitation near the Pamet River including wetus (domed huts consisting of a wooden frame covered with bark, grasses, or reeds), cornfields, and a burial ground. Of note, Standish and his men discovered an English tea kettle and a metal bucket near the Paomet dwellings, suggesting prior contact with Europeans. They also discovered corn and beans, of which they stole around ten bushels. The scouting party also took objects from the wetus and from a grave site they exhumed.[5] The pilgrims later sent a message to the Massasoit sachem Ousamequin, the leader of the Wampanoag confederacy, offering compensation for the theft of the corn. The pilgrims would later go on to found the Plymouth colony in what is now the state of Massachusetts.[4]

On September 13, 1621, a group of Native American leaders signed an "instrument of submission" to the British King James. The Paomet were included in this agreement through the consent of Ousamequin.[6]

In 1623 Myles Standish befriended an unnamed Paomet native, who invited the Englishman to spend the night in his hut and promised him corn if he accompanied him back to Paomet lands. The future Plymouth colony governor Edward Winslow speculated in his 1624 pamphlet Good Newes from New England that the Paomet man planned to kill Standish[6] (though later historians have cast doubt on this claim);[1][7] if so these attempts were unsuccessful as the Englishman was unable to sleep due to the cold and failed to reach Paomet lands by boat due to heavy winds.[6] Ousamequin, who the English had assisted during an illness, reportedly confided to the Plymouth settlers that the Paomet and several other Wampanoag tribes were plotting an attack on the Plymouth Colony.[8]

King Philip's War and land sales

In April of 1671 the sachems of several Native American tribes, including a Paomet leader called John Quaqaquansuke gathered at Plymouth to affirm their good relations to the colony; the historian Charles Swift speculated that the Plymouth settlers arranged this display due to tensions in the relations between Metacomet and the Plymouth colony.[9] War broke out in 1675 between the Wampanoag, the English settlers, and their respective native allies. The Nauset, many of whom had converted to Christianity, aided the English in the war.[3]

In 1680 two "Indian(s) of Paomett" going by the English names of Peter and Joshua lay claim to part of the land on which the Plymouth colony was constructed. The colony paid the men five pounds and ten shillings and affirmed the right of the Peter, Joshua and their descendants to continue to live on and collect specified resources from the land.[10] The Paomet later sold to the English the lands on which the towns of Eastham and Truro were subsequently founded. The population of the Nauset tribes declined in the 1700s, with many succumbing to illness.[1][3] By 1798, most of the remaining Nauset had congregating in Maspee.[1]

Dwellings

Standish's 1620 scouting party gives a detailed description of the Paomet wetus:

"The houses were made with young sapling trees, bended [stet] and both ends stuck in the ground. They were made round, like unto an arbor, and covered down to the ground with thick and well wrought mats, and the door was not over a yard high, made of a mat to open. The chimney was a wide open hole in the top, for which they had a mat to cover it close when they pleased. One might stand and go upright in them. In the midst of them were four little trunches knocked into the ground, and small sticks laid over, on which they hung their pots, and what they had to seethe. Round about the fire they lay on mats, which are their beds. The houses were double matter, for as they were matted without, so were they within, with newer and fairer mats."[4]

The mats were constructed of sedge and bulrushes.[4]

Sustenance

The 1620 Mayflower scouting party documented corn fields as well as red, yellow, and blue varieties of corn buried under heaps of sand in the Paomet lands. They also discovered harvested beans and wheat and noted walnut trees, sassafras, and strawberries growing near the Paomet fields.[4] The Paomet wetus contained dried acorns and tobacco seed along with other unidentified seeds.[4]

The details of the 1680 land agreement suggest that the Paomet also harvested cranberries, "hurtleberries" (likely blueberries, lingonberries, and/or huckleberries) and wild peas.[10]

Historical accounts and archeological evidence suggest that the Paomet hunted with bows and traps[4] and caught fish using nets and harpoons.[11] Deer appear to have been the most significant game animal.[11] An account of the 1620 scouting expedition describes the future Plymouth Colony governor William Bradford being caught in a Paomet snare trap:

"As we wandered we came to a tree, where a young spirit was bowed down over a bow, and some acorns strewed underneath. Stephen Hopkins said it had been to catch some deer. So as we were looking at it, William Bradford being in the rear, when he came looked also upon it, and as he went about, it gave a sudden jerk up, and he was immediately caught by the leg. It was a very pretty device, made with a rope of their own making and having a noose as artificially made as any roper in England can make..."[4]

The 1620 Mayflower scouting party also found the claws of eagles preserved in the Paomet wetus along with pieces of herring and other fish.[4] Excavations of the shell strata at a site formerly inhabited by the Paomet have uncovered the remains of multiple fish species, including sturgeon. According to the presence and quantity of shellfish remains, oysters were likely the most commonly consumed shellfish, followed by clams and quahogs. The remains of scallops, mussels, and other shellfish were found in lesser quantities.[11]

The details of the 1680 land agreement suggest that the Paomet harvested blubber from beached whales, orcas, and porpoises.[10]

Craftsmanship

The 1620 Mayflower scouting party observed several examples of Paomet craftsmanship in the wetus, including wooden bowels, trays, and dishes, earthenware pots, and baskets constructed of crab shells.[4]

Further artifacts have been unearthed from a stratified shell heap 1.5 miles northwest of Truro Center. These are believed to have been created by the Paomet people (as well as, possibly, by earlier inhabitants of the cape). Tools made of stone, bone, and antler have been excavated. Among these were knives, spearheads, scrapers, awls, bone harpoons, slate gorgets, stone net-sinkers, a drill, a stone ax, a whetstone, a drill, a celt, and a bone needle.[11]

Multiple fragments of pottery were also uncovered. Some of these incorporate shell fragments as a tempering agent while others appear to have been mineral-tempered. Several examples cord-marked pottery were found. Other pieces had been decorated with the backs of shells or other instruments.[11]

Burial practices

The 1620 Mayflower scouting party encountered a site with heaps of sand, one of which was covered by old mats "and had a wooding [stet] thing like a mortar whelmed on the top of it, and an earthen pot laid in a little hole at the end thereof." Upon excavating it, they found a bow and what they presumed to be the decaying remains of arrows. They concluded that it was a grave and did not excavate this site further.[4]

The party later discovered a second site covered with boards. Underneath these, they found two mats, between which were a number of objects; these included a bow, dishes, and trays. Under the second mat was a board "about three quarters long, finely carved and painted, with three tines, or broaches, on the top, like a crown."

Beneath this was a third mat, under which the party found two bundles.[4] The larger bundle contained pieces or iron, a knife, a pack-needle, and the remains of a blond man bound in a pair of cloth breeches and a type of canvas cassock typically worn by sailors.[Note 2] The remains were enveloped in a fine, strong-smelling red powder[4] (now thought to have been red ochre).[11]

The smaller bundle contained the remains of a small child adorned with white beads and a small bow "around three quarters long."[4]

Legacy

Place names

The Pamet River in Massachusetts is named after the Paomet people.[12] The town of Corn Hill was so named as it was the location where the Plymouth settlers stole corn from Paomet stores.[4]

Seal of Truro, Massachusetts
The former town seal of Truro

Truro town seal

The former town seal of Truro, Massachusetts depicted a Native American in a feathered headdress standing in front of two tipis. The seal was criticized by some residents and historians for its inaccurate depiction of the Paomet people.[13] A new seal approved in May 2026 does not depict any figures but includes the word 'Paomet' in homage to the former tribe.[14]

Monuments and proposed future projects

In April 2023 Wampanoag leaders honored the Paomet people during a groundbreaking ceremony for a traditional wetu constructed on the tribe's former land.[2] This was completed in June 2023. Members of the Wampanoag community have rendered concepts for four additional memorials to the Paomet: a 16-foot sculpture of the giant Maushop from Wampanoag folklore at High Head; a garden path with a white pine tree at the center at Corn Hill; signage about the Paomet at Village Pond; and an art installation at Pamet Park consisting of a section of a traditional wetu fitted with a contemporary graphic and accompanied by a stone monument depicting a village scene.[15]

Notes

  1. ↑ Though the Pamet river was named for the Paomet people, the spelling 'Paomet' is more widely used to refer to the tribe (per Helen McNeil-Ashton, vice president of collections at the Truro Historical Society, quoted in Carson, 2026).
  2. ↑ The American writer James Thacher speculated that the corpse belonged to a sailor from a French ship which had been wrecked near Cape Cod a few years prior to The Mayflower voyage.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Deyo, Simeon L. (1890). History of Barnstable County, Massachusetts, 1620-1637-1686-1890. New York: Blake – via Archive.org.
  2. 1 2 Storer, Abraham (April 26, 2023). "A Blessing of the Land for a Wetu in Truro". The Provincetown Independent.
  3. 1 2 3 Town of Eastham Massachusetts. "Nauset Indians | Eastham, MA". www.eastham-ma.gov. Retrieved 2026-09-01.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Johnson, Caleb, ed. (1622). Mourt's Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, 1622.
  5. ↑ Thacher, James (1835). History of the Town of Plymouth, from Its First Settlement in 1620, to the Present Time: With a Concise History of the Aborigines of New England, and Their Wars with the English, &c (second ed.). Boston: Marsh, Capen & Lyon.
  6. 1 2 3 Cheever, George Barrell (1848). The journal of the pilgrims at Plymouth, in New England, in 1620; reprinted from the original volume, with historical and local illustrations of providences, principles and persons. New York: Wiley.
  7. ↑ Ferris, Andrew (2019). ""Vile and Clamorous Reports" from New England: The Specter of Indigenous Conspiracy in Early Plymouth". Early American Literature. 54 (2). University of North Carolina Press: 381–412. ISSN 0012-8163.
  8. ↑ Winslow, Edward (1841). Young, Alexander (ed.). Good Newes from New-England (PDF). London: I. D. – via Project Gutenberg.
  9. ↑ Swift, Charles Francis (1897). Cape Cod, the Right Arm of Massachusetts: An Historical Narrative (PDF). Yarmouth: Register Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1-5485-1484-6. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
  10. 1 2 3 Delucia, Christine (2019-11-01). "Terrapolitics in the Dawnland: Relationality, Resistance, and Indigenous Futures in the Native and Colonial Northeast". The New England Quarterly. 92 (4): 548–583. doi:10.1162/tneq_a_00789. ISSN 0028-4866.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Moffett, Ross (1951). "The Rose Site, a Stratified Shell Heap on Cape Cod, Massachusetts". American Antiquity. 17 (2): 98–107. doi:10.2307/277243. ISSN 0002-7316.
  12. ↑ Fisher, John J. (1982), "Pamet", Beaches and Coastal Geology, Springer, New York, NY, pp. 630–631, doi:10.1007/0-387-30843-1_316, ISBN 978-0-387-30843-2, retrieved 2026-08-03
  13. ↑ Carson, Sonya (April 22, 2026). "Truro Unveils a Redesigned Town Seal". The Provincetown Independent.
  14. ↑ Bragg, Mary Ann (May 17, 2026). "$25M Truro DPW plan advances, despite early setback — now to ballot". Cape Cod Times.
  15. ↑ Legere, Christine (September 10, 2025). "Wampanoag Design Team Unveils Concepts for Paomet Memorials". The Provincetown Independent.
This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.