People of the Breaking Day

Book excerpt: We are Wampanoags, People of the Breaking Day. Nippa'uus the Sun, in his journey through the sky, warms us first as he rises over the rim of the sea. At his birth each new morning we say, "Thank you, Nippa'uus, for returning to us with your warmth and light and beauty." But it is Kiehtan, the Great Spirit, who made us all: we, the two-legged who stand tall, and the four-legged; those that swim and those that fly and the little people who crawl; and flowers and trees and rocks. He made us all, brothers sharing the earth. So begins the story of the Wampanoag people, the tribe that lived in southeastern Massachusetts at the time the Pilgrims landed. In this companion book to The Pilgrims of Plimoth, winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for nonfiction, Marcia Sewall recreates the world of the Wampanoags, the People of the Breaking Day. In a voice that evokes the pride and natural poetry of these native people and in paintings glowing with life and light, the distinguished author-illustrator presents another view of an important time in American history, a time before the meeting of two very different cultures.