############################################# Wampanoag Indians [Illustration: (Wampanoag village. Native Americans broiling fish. Signing a treaty of friendship.)] The first human beings to live here did not arrive by sea. In all likelihood they came on foot from the south, southwest, and east, perhaps following caribou or other game up the river valleys across the then wide coastal plain. These people, known as Paleoindians, arrived at least 9,000 years ago. Little is known about them, but they appear to have been a nomadic people, hunting and gathering in small groups. The earliest period represented by a variety of archeological sites is 3,000 to 6,000 BP (Before Present). An archeological site uncovered recently by the ocean at Coast Guard Beach suggests more permanent settlements. This site has been carbon-dated to more than 2,000 BP, and contains post holes indicative of shelter construction. These early Native Americans created chipped stone tools, fished in kettle ponds, and likely wintered in the Cape’s coniferous woodlands. By the early 1600s American Indians used or inhabited all the lands now encompassed by Cape Cod National Seashore. These Wampanoags lived in 6 villages along the creeks and bays from Chatham to Wellfleet, relying on both the land and sea for food. When French explorer Samuel de Champlain visited Cape Cod in 1605 and 1606, he noted that villagers in what became Eastham and Chatham were raising corn, beans, squash, and tobacco. They tilled their fields with wooden spades after burning off the vegetation. They used crabs as fertilizer but ate clams, quahogs, oysters, and other shellfish. Champlain noted that the Monomoy band at Stage Harbor in Chatham stored corn in grass sacks buried 5 to 6 feet in the sand. He thought they were better fishermen and farmers than hunters. The Wampanoags lived in domed shelters (below), which consisted of a frame of saplings bent into semicircles. These semicircles were linked by circles of saplings running parallel to the ground. The Indians covered the frames with grass, reeds, and bark and left a large hole in the roofs so smoke could escape from fires in a stone-lined pit in the center. The dwellings were not clustered but separated by cultivated fields. _Native Americans broil fish in this Theodore de Bry 1590 engraving (below) of a John White watercolor. Samuel de Champlain’s 1606 map (below right) of Chatham’s Stage Harbor area, which he called Port Fortune, shows Wampanoags attacking the French upon learning that they intended to settle there. The French had stayed in the harbor for 2 weeks drying out their ship and repairing its rudder._ _Henry Botkin’s early 20th-century painting depicts the Wampanoags and Pilgrims signing a treaty of friendship._ ############################################# Pilgrims First Landing [Illustration: (Map showing path of the Mayflower and its shallop. The Mayflower. The Pilgrims come ashore.)]