Wampanoag

Background

While most Americans know the story of the Pilgrims, the Indigenous people with whom they formed a temporary treaty are lesser known.

Those people were part of the Wampanoag Nation, now famous for their contributions of deer meat and oysters at the mythical first Thanksgiving feast. Roughly 5,000 of their descendants live today as part of federally recognized tribes in coastal Massachusetts.

Some contemporary Wampanoag view the Thanksgiving holiday—and its use of their history—as a day of mourning, a reminder of the disease, violence, and displacement their ancestors endured amid European migration.

Origins and Culture

Wampanoag means "People of the First Light." Originally, 69 tribes made up the Wampanoag Nation. For an estimated 12,000 years, they and their ancestors lived in the area now known as eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and parts of Connecticut.

The mostly seaside communities were partly nomadic, seasonally moving up and down the coasts to hunt or fish. They subsisted partly on inter-planted mounds of corn, squash, and beans, a common Indigenous farming method known as the “Three Sisters.”

While men often held political roles, the Wampanoag were generally matrilineal—women-owned and passed on the property to their female descendants.

European Arrival

As European traders began to visit New England in the early 1600s, they (and animal stowaways like rats) brought novel diseases. Epidemics swept through the Wampanoag, killing approximately two-thirds of the estimated population of 45,000, part of a broader event later called the Great Dying.

One of the few survivors of the Great Dying was Tisquantum (also known as Squanto), a translator who taught the settlers how to fish, plant, and hunt. He had learned European languages after being kidnapped in 1614 by an English captain and sold into slavery. By the time he managed to return home, his tribe was nearly wiped out by disease, and the Pilgrims arrived soon after.

The First Thanksgiving

The Great Dying hit the Wampanoag hard, and the nearby Narragansett tribe looked to take advantage of the opportunity to subjugate their rivals. Seeking an ally against the Narragansett, the Wampanoag signed a treaty with the English settlers in 1621, promising to defend one another against attacks.

The alliance—and the feast that would become a core symbol in US culture—was a pragmatic arrangement that aimed to help the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag for years. Still, contemporary historians note the alliance was less rosy than the Thanksgiving myth can make it appear.

At the time, the feast was recorded in just a few short lines by a single eyewitness. It wasn’t until more than 200 years later that it became known as “Thanksgiving” in a narrative favoring the memory of the English settlers rather than the Wampanoag and other tribes.

Decline

The relationship between the settlers and the Wampanoag would eventually deteriorate, culminating in King Philip’s War (1675 to 1676), a conflict that decimated what was left of the Wampanoag and permanently shifted power to the colonists.

Many Wampanoag were sold into slavery, while others were forced to integrate with Wampanoag groups on the coastal islands. Through British colonialism, American independence, and beyond, the natives would struggle to integrate into European customs while preserving their places and traditions.

Communities like Mashpee on Cape Cod and Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard are federally recognized tribes, meaning they have a formal government-to-government relationship with the US.