-travelogue -

this morning I'm considering U.S. route 6 from east to west;

east from gay, surfy Provincetown, Massachusetts, west to Bishop, California.

Bishop's also a small town and looks real pretty what with the mountains out back.

no particular reason for this Bishop, but I guess one's as good as another.

but first, we'll stop at the banks of the Taunton River at the foot of my home town.

refresher:

on our journey, the route 6 tentacle moves southward then turns westward

from the Cape across the Sagamore spanning the canal through Buzzard's Bay

eventually cutting a path between the house of my birth in Fall River,

("Quequechan" as the Wampanoag called it which translates to "Falling Water")

and the ballpark running parallel to the first base line.–– but first it cuts its way

through the Narrows between the fresh-water ponds of the great Watuppa nation,

into the exhaled lung of the Wampanoag where settling English land-grabbers,

––"Coat-men" they were called,––

made war against the indigenous Wampanoag people and their fierce

warrior princess, called "Weetamoo", the heart of the Pocassets, on the run for her life.

but the English hunted her down while Weetamoo clung to a raft on the river,

where the "Coat-men" found her and drowned her then fished her out

of the Taunton, and due to her rebellious––"how dare you"!–– attitude,

sliced-off her head, fetched wood for a pike and brought it to a point,

then set the pike fast into the dank river soil and there, pushed her head

from the neck of it into and through the point of the pike and pressed down hard––

hard down into the skull of Weetamoo, still drenched by the Taunton waters,

so the Wampanoag under her command would see what’s become

of their Sachem, heart of the Pocasset band of the Wampanoag Nation,

and her head stayed there for a long time, guarded by "Coat-men" sentries 

so that no Wampanoag could dare lay claim to her.

this happened in the mid-to-late 17th century at the banks of the Taunton,

a short, down-hill bike ride west from my earliest house.

now onward! west to Bishop!

travelogue