In the summer of 1791, Thomas Jefferson sat with three elderly women of the Unkechaug tribe of Long Island. Convinced that these women were among the last living speakers, Jefferson transliterated a list of Unkechaug words on the back of an envelope alongside the English translation.

At the historic site of Plymouth Plantation, a gravel path leads all visitors meandering through a recreation of the pre-contact land of Indigenous plants, and through a Wampanoag village with Wampanoag (and other Native Nations) staff. Walking through the native land unsettles the visitor’s expectation.

There was a time, not too long ago, when we weren’t allowed to talk about it. Being a serious academic meant an uncompromising attitude toward personal sacrifice.

When young Caleb walks into the woods with his father on a forbidden hunting expedition, he finds out a horrible truth about his religion. His own “corrupt nature,” inherited from Adam at birth, isn’t the worst of it.

Housed in the American Indian Vocabulary Collection of the Watkinson Library are two manuscript prayer books from the eighteenth century, written in the Abenaki language.