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Robert Cox, Chief Two Running Elk, walks the land that his ancestors have treaded for thousands of years — and that his fifth great uncle Paul Cuffe and fifth great-grandfather Michael Wainer bought the deed for in 1797.
This is part of a series of stories commemorating the 250th anniversary of American Independence and the legacy of the Revolution.
“This was like the highway of its day,” he says, surveying the quiet, forested hillside that rises between the branching waters now known as the Westport River. Pointing south, he describes a food forest he’s planning, where berries, fruit trees, herbs, and other medicinal plants will dot the landscape. Pointing north, he can envision the powwow field and farm-to-table foodstand where both tribal members and the broader community can find nourishment and respite in equal measure.
The future looks bright for these members of the Pocasset Wampanoag of the Pokanoket Nation. But on this July 4, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Two Running Elk, who also goes by Chief Rob, will face that history more soberly than most.
“It’s hard for me to celebrate,” said Chief Rob. “I can celebrate the great people of the time and some of the great progress. But as a Native, I can’t honestly say there’s anything to celebrate.”
Chief Rob feels the connection to his ancestors on this very hillside, now known as Wainer Woods. And, like for most Native families, that requires looking back at a complicated web of interwoven identities.
With Cape Verdean grandparents, West Indian relatives, and Native heritage, Chief Rob looks back at a family tree with both Revolutionary heroes and people this country sought to exterminate. He is a direct descendant of Massasoit, the Indigenous leader who first welcomed the Pilgrims, and whose title the English colonists thought was a name. His family includes James Easton and Paul Cuffe, men who risked their lives in the Revolution, and Michael Wainer, one of the area’s early residents and important entrepreneurs.
Yet, “every few chapters in the history books, I see my aunt killed, my uncle hanged,” he said. “My feelings are not to celebrate, but to commemorate my people’s refusal to be abused.”
The Pokanoket are commonly put under the umbrella of the Wampanoag nation. Today there are multiple groups who use the words Pocasset or Pokanoket to self-identify, but they do not always associate with one another.
At the hilltop, Chief Rob’s family is laughing and trading stories. They are awash in the incense from mullein, an indigenous medicinal plant. It is the first crop harvested on this land in half a century, and it smells richly sweet.
Chief Rob is investing his own money to return this land into a gathering space for tribal members and anyone who wants to learn about Indigenous ways of life. He eventually hopes to attract support from state and philanthropic grants. This year’s semiquincentennial is an opportunity for him and his family to remember the fullness of history, and a chance to use that history to look forward.
“For me it’s a big eye-opener,” said Aysha Cox, one of Chief Rob’s adult children, as she looked over old family pictures and ship ledgers from Paul Cuffe’s businesses. She said that people of color have long been “discredited” for their contributions to history. “Just to learn more about my family history alone — we were really doing stuff that was unheard of.”
“As far as the [250th] anniversary, I feel like not just Massachusetts, but the whole country needs to learn more about what our family has contributed and what we brought to this country, to this land,” she said.
The family historian is George Wortham Jr., who keeps records and many more memories. After a career as an engineer and machinist, he returned to Massachusetts and dedicated himself to collecting and preserving the family history of the Cuffe and Wainer descendants.
“I wrote about growing up in the country, because I didn’t want it to be lost,” Wortham said. He refers to this plot of land in Westport as “the country,” because that’s what his family called the old farmland passed down from Paul Cuffe through the generations. In 2021, Wortham recorded his memories for the Westport Historical Society, and in particular devoted his attention to preserving the contributions of the Wainer side of the family, which had been more overlooked.
“We can’t strictly go off what the history books tell us,” Wortham said. “We’re discovering that there’s a lot, a lot more that predates the Declaration of Independence. We were told for a long time that we didn’t exist before the slave trade. We have direct lineage back to [before] all that.”
In fact, these Cuffe and Wainer descendants are unique, said Lee Blake, president of the New Bedford Historical Society, precisely because of how well-documented their family tree is.
The family is “one of the best documented African American families in the country,” said Blake. The 1742 bill of sale of Kofi Slocum, Paul Cuffe’s father, for 150 pounds has been preserved among the Cuffe records. Most African American families had their origin stories, family records, and family ties obliterated by slavery. “It’s so incredibly unusual [that] the Cuffes knew where they came from,” Blake said.
The family’s African American identity intermingles with their Native identity. Chief Rob recalled that Native people suffered enslavement alongside Africans for centuries, with millions of Indigenous people shipped to the Caribbean and sold into slavery. Even today, he said that many Native Americans have become “urban Indians,” displaced into cities that took over their land.
Despite the troubled history he is confronting, Chief Rob has hope for the future. Wainer Woods, the 52-acre parcel he is working to restore in Westport, is key to that hope. Chief Rob hopes that the community comes together on this land as his family has for generations. It is a vision that Paul Cuffe himself once espoused, according to Lee Blake: “He looked at wealth as a way to share,” Blake said of the historical ship captain.
“I have people ask me,” Chief Rob said, “‘After everything that’s happened to you, you are still inviting people up on your land?’ I say, ‘Well, maybe one day they’ll get it, you know?’”
Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org
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