Who Are the Wampanoag?
The Wampanoag (Wôpanâak, "People of the First Light" or "Eastern People") are an Algonquian-speaking people of southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, today numbering approximately 4,000-5,000 members across two federally recognized tribes: the **Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe** and the **Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah)** on Martha's Vineyard. The Wampanoag are famous—and often mythologized—for their role in the "First Thanksgiving" of 1621, when they shared a harvest feast with Pilgrim colonists at Plymouth. The reality is more complex: under sachem **Massasoit**, they strategically allied with the English, only to face King Philip's War (1675-76), one of the bloodiest conflicts in American history that nearly destroyed their nation.
The Real First Thanksgiving
The mythologized "First Thanksgiving" obscures a more nuanced history. When the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, they landed in Wampanoag territory already depopulated by epidemic disease—likely introduced by earlier European visitors—that killed 75-90% of coastal peoples between 1616-1619. The Wampanoag sachem **Massasoit** (Ousamequin) saw the struggling English as potential allies against the rival Narragansett, who had been spared the epidemic. **Tisquantum (Squanto)**, a Patuxet Wampanoag who had been kidnapped to Europe and learned English, mediated the alliance and taught Pilgrims survival skills. The 1621 harvest celebration—the "First Thanksgiving"—was a diplomatic feast cementing the alliance, not the peaceful multicultural meal of American mythology. Wampanoag attended armed, and the alliance served mutual strategic interests. This relationship lasted Massasoit's lifetime but collapsed catastrophically afterward.
King Philip's War
**King Philip's War** (1675-1676) was the deadliest conflict per capita in American history. Massasoit's son **Metacom** (called "King Philip" by the English) watched colonists encroach on Wampanoag lands, execute his brother Wamsutta under suspicious circumstances, and demand humiliating submission. When war erupted, Metacom organized a pan-Indian alliance including Nipmuc and Narragansett peoples. The war devastated New England: 52 of 90 English towns were attacked, 12 destroyed entirely. But the cost to Native peoples was catastrophic—perhaps 3,000 killed, including Metacom himself (shot, beheaded, quartered, his head displayed on a pike in Plymouth for 25 years). Survivors were enslaved and sold to the Caribbean or fled to allied tribes. The war destroyed Wampanoag political independence, though remnant communities survived around Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard, maintaining identity through centuries of marginalization.
Martha's Vineyard and Cultural Survival
The **Aquinnah Wampanoag** of Martha's Vineyard represent remarkable cultural continuity. The island's isolation provided some protection from mainland pressures; Wampanoag there maintained community, land (the colorful Gay Head Cliffs are ancestral territory), and identity through the colonial period and beyond. Uniquely, Martha's Vineyard developed a deaf community where hereditary deafness was common; both Wampanoag and English residents used **Martha's Vineyard Sign Language**, creating a rare bilingual deaf-hearing society. The Aquinnah achieved federal recognition in 1987, governing the 485-acre Gay Head reservation. The **Mashpee Wampanoag** on Cape Cod fought for federal recognition for decades, finally achieving it in 2007, only to face Trump administration attempts to revoke their reservation status—a battle ongoing through courts. Both communities work to revitalize **Wôpanâak**, a language with no native speakers since 1908, remarkably reconstructed from historical documents by linguist Jessie Little Doe Baird.
Contemporary Wampanoag Nations
Today's Wampanoag challenge the Thanksgiving myth while building their nations. The **Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe**, headquartered in Mashpee, Massachusetts, operates a government, cultural programs, and has fought to secure their reservation against federal challenges. The **Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah)** manages their Martha's Vineyard territory, operates a cultural center at the Gay Head Cliffs, and participates in island governance. The **Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project**, founded by Jessie Little Doe Baird (MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient), has trained speakers in the revived language—one of few successful "sleeping language" revivals. Each Thanksgiving, Wampanoag and other Native peoples gather at Plymouth for the **National Day of Mourning**, countering celebratory narratives with remembrance of colonization's costs. From near-destruction in King Philip's War to contemporary language revival, the Wampanoag demonstrate indigenous persistence in the very land where American colonization began.
References
- Silverman, D. J. (2019). This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. Bloomsbury Publishing.
- Lepore, J. (1998). The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity. Knopf.
- Brooks, L. (2018). Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War. Yale University Press.
- Mandell, D. R. (2010). King Philip's War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty. Johns Hopkins University Press.