Mythological Thanksgiving Thursday: Moshup
It’s Mythological Throwback Thursday, and for many of our followers it’s also Thanksgiving! Hope you’re having a fantastic holiday! Today we wanted to honour the Wampanoag tribe, who are generally believed to be the Native Americans present at the first Thanksgiving feast. One of their most prominent folk heroes is the giant known as Moshup.
Moshup was at one time the leader of the Wampanoag people. He represented all beings large and great. Because nature requires balance, he married the leader of the Makiawisug, the little people. Her name was Granny Squannit and bad weather occurred whenever Moshup and Granny Squannit argued.
He once lived on the mainland of Massachusetts, but elected to settle on the island known as Noepe, or in English as Martha’s Vineyard. He decided to build a land bridge between the island and the mainland by dropping giant rocks into the water. Some say a crab pinched his toe, and others that he simply grew frustrated with his work, but the work was abandoned and in his rage he stomped all about Massachusetts, hurling rocks into Connecticut. That’s why Connecticut is so rocky and why there are so many peculiar footprint shapes in rocks around Massachusetts. The European colonists called them Devil’s Footprints, but now you know better!
Moshup’s favourite food was broiled whale, which he would catch and share with the Wampanoag. One year he fed them so well that in return they gave him all of the tobacco they’d harvested. Moshup loaded it all into his pipe and smoked it, depositing the ashes in the ocean. The ashes became the island of Nantucket. Yes, that Nantucket.
Moshup left the Wampanoag before the European colonists arrived. He warned that the fair-skinned people who would soon arrive would herald tribulation for them. In this he was not wrong: disease and war wrought a heavy toll on the Wampanoag people, whose numbers have still not recovered to what they were in the early seventeenth century. As for Moshup, scholars from local tribes have noted that he is believed to change shape, appearing in the form of several creatures, or as a gust of cold wind.
We are thankful that you stopped by today! Please check in soon for more Mythological Throwbacks and stories!
