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Nov 18, 2017

Rediscovery of the ancient Land of the Red Sunrise

 Sea level rise has played an important role in  bringing together three ancient people  , ten thousand years ago. The Wabanaki, the Maritime Archaics and the people of now sunken Georges Bank.  However, people being people, it wasn't at first an altogether peaceful coming together. Here is a fanciful; description of what may have taken place...

When the Wabanaki inhabited the coast of what is now called the Gulf of Maine, they had interactions with two other nations at their shorelines:  Red Paint People, a seafaring and tidal river tribe migrated south from Newfoundland, generations earlier 

This became  a stalemate until  members of  the indigenous people  from the 15,000 square mile island - that  is now submerged Georges  Bank - came to the Maine coast.  Georges Bank  was then a large island with human communities and wildife living on it   Its people would have been from the Rhode Island/southern Massachusetts area   It  had been a large peninsula connected to the mainland there, until sea level rise. parted it from the mainland  j

Georges Bankers joined in the attack on the Red Paints, killing many and driving away or enslaving the rest. 

Over the millenia, this offshore nation's people  (likely of Wampanoag ancestry)   became personified as the hero trickster "Gluskapi".  The now submerged Georges Bank  the place  where Gluskapi had come from  became the Land of the Red Sunrise.  The defeated Red Paint People became the demons, witches and monsters  slain by Gluskapi. 

Here's a version of that mythic tale with its echoes of that ancient time.

"This is a tale of the old time, of Glooskap, the mighty magician, who came from the Land of the Red Sunrise, sailing over the seas in a stone canoe.

Stately and handsome was the magician and when he reached the  country of the Wabanaki, he found it filled with Witches, Giants, Sorcerers, and Fiends. He pursued and  killed all these creatures, so that the Wabanaki dwelt once more in safety.,

...Then Glooskap made a rich feast by the shore, and invited all the animals to it. After which he entered his stone canoe, and, singing sweetly, sailed away over the seas, from the Country of the Wabanaki back to the Land of the Red Sunrise.










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