Cape Verdean “immigrants” were contracted as seasonal pickers on the cranberry bogs of Harwich and Falmouth.

These are the exact same places where American Indians had lived and worked for generations. Not similar places. Not nearby places. The same places.[^1]

Harwich and Falmouth sit on Cape Cod, traditional territory of the Mashpee Wampanoag and other indigenous communities. American Indians had been managing cranberry resources in these areas long before European colonization. They had developed sustainable harvesting techniques, seasonal migration patterns, and community labor systems centered on cranberry collection and processing.

Cape Verdean cranberry pickers, arriving as “immigrants” in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, found themselves doing seasonal work in territories their ancestors may have been taken from in 1501, using knowledge their ancestors may have developed before European intervention.

[^1] Cape Verdean cranberry pickers in Harwich and Falmouth — same areas as American Indians. Database claim from Kurimeo Ahau, Pt. 18 (qpVtRcwDhCo).

Cranberry cultivation was indigenous American technology.

The Wampanoag and other New England tribal nations had been managing cranberry bogs for centuries before European colonization. They understood the seasonal flooding and draining cycles that cranberries required. They knew how to construct bog systems that maximized yield while maintaining the broader wetland ecosystems. They had developed tools, techniques, and community labor systems specifically designed for cranberry harvesting.[^1]

European colonists didn’t invent cranberry agriculture; they adopted it from indigenous Americans who were already managing sophisticated bog systems. The cranberry industry that employed Cape Verdean seasonal workers was built on indigenous American knowledge, in territories that remained indigenous American homeland.

Cape Verdean cranberry pickers were not learning European agricultural techniques. They were participating in an industry based on indigenous American knowledge, in indigenous American territory, using techniques their ancestors may have contributed to before displacement.

[^1] Indigenous American origins of cranberry cultivation and bog management. Historical analysis from New England agricultural development and Wampanoag land management practices.

The Cape Verdean cranberry picking season followed the same migration patterns that had organized indigenous American life for generations.

Harvest time brought extended families together from multiple communities. Workers traveled from permanent settlements to seasonal work camps. Children participated alongside adults in community labor that combined economic activity with cultural transmission. The work was seasonal, temporary, and organized around extended kinship networks rather than individual wage labor.[^1]

This was not European-style industrial agriculture. This was indigenous American seasonal migration adapted to the demands of commercial cranberry production. Cape Verdean cranberry pickers were maintaining social and economic patterns that connected them to the land-based communities their ancestors had been displaced from.

The cranberry picking communities created temporary villages that resembled the seasonal settlements that had organized indigenous American life in New England before European colonization.

[^1] Cape Verdean seasonal migration patterns resembled indigenous American seasonal settlement systems. Analysis of cranberry picking community organization and indigenous American land use patterns.

Two populations were occupying the same land, doing the same work, following the same seasonal patterns, but they were called by different names.

American Indians working cranberry bogs in Harwich and Falmouth were “natives” engaged in traditional seasonal labor in their ancestral territory. Cape Verdeans working the same bogs, using the same techniques, following the same migration patterns, were “immigrants” learning American agricultural methods.[^1]

The identity categories obscured the overlap. Cape Verdean cranberry pickers with indigenous American genetic heritage were not recognized as returning to ancestral territory. American Indian cranberry pickers with Cape Verdean family connections were not recognized as maintaining Atlantic island networks.

The same genetic heritage, the same seasonal work patterns, the same territorial knowledge, but processed through different colonial naming systems that made the connections invisible.

[^1] Identity overlap between Cape Verdean and American Indian cranberry workers made invisible by colonial naming systems. Analysis from Cape Verdean migration patterns and indigenous American territorial continuity.

Cape Verdean cranberry picking was organized through extended family networks that spanned multiple generations and multiple communities.

Grandparents brought grandchildren to the bogs. Families returned to the same work camps year after year. Seasonal relationships developed between Cape Verdean families and the Portuguese and Yankee farmers who contracted their labor. Marriage connections linked Cape Verdean cranberry families to local Portuguese, Irish, and American Indian communities.[^1]

This was not temporary immigrant labor seeking quick American wages. This was the development of permanent territorial relationships based on seasonal economic activity. Cape Verdean families were establishing multi-generational connections to specific places in Massachusetts, connections that resembled the territorial relationships that had organized indigenous American community life.

The cranberry picking communities created lasting social networks that connected Cape Verdean families to Massachusetts territory across generations.

[^1] Cape Verdean cranberry picking organized through extended family networks establishing multi-generational territorial connections. Analysis of Cape Verdean community development in Massachusetts.

Cape Verdean cranberry pickers were not adapting to American agricultural systems.

They were returning to land management practices their ancestors had developed, in territory their ancestors had been taken from, using knowledge that had been preserved through generations of Portuguese colonialism and Atlantic navigation. The cranberry bogs of Cape Cod were not foreign workplace; they were ancestral territory being reclaimed through seasonal labor.[^1]

The overlap was not coincidence. Cape Verdeans were drawn to cranberry work in Massachusetts because the seasonal migration patterns, the extended family organization, and the land-based community relationships resembled the social and economic systems their ancestors had maintained before displacement to Cape Verde.

The cranberry connection was documentation of territorial continuity. Cape Verdean “immigrants” working the bogs of Harwich and Falmouth were indigenous Americans returning to ancestral territory through agricultural work that their ancestors had developed and their descendants had preserved.

[^1] Cape Verdean cranberry work as return to ancestral territory and land management practices. Historical synthesis connecting Portuguese depopulation of Labrador (1501) with Cape Verdean cranberry worker migration patterns.