Wampanoag

The Wampanoag, also rendered Wôpanâak, are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands currently based in southeastern Massachusetts and formerly parts of eastern Rhode Island. Their historical territory includes the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Two Wampanoag tribes are federally recognized: Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). The Wampanoag language, also known as Massachusett, is a Southern New England Algonquian language. Prior to English contact in the 17th century, the Wampanoag numbered as many as 40,000 people living across 67 villages composing the Wampanoag Nation. These villages covered the territory along the east coast as far as Wessagusset (today called Weymouth), all of what is now Cape Cod and the islands of Natocket and Noepe (now called Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard), and southeast as far as Pokanocket (now Bristol and Warren, Rhode Island). The Wampanoag lived on this land for over 12,000 years. From 1615 to 1619, a leptospirosis epidemic carried by rodents arriving in European ships dramatically reduced the population of the Wampanoag and neighboring tribes. The drastic depopulation facilitated the colonization of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. More than 50 years later, Wampanoag Chief Sachem Metacom and his allies waged King Philip's War (1675–1676) against the colonists. The war resulted in the death of 40 percent of the surviving Wampanoag. New England colonists sold many Wampanoag men into slavery in Bermuda, the West Indies, or on plantations and farms in North America. Wampanoag people continue to live in historical homelands and maintain central aspects of their culture. Oral traditions, ceremonies, song and dance, social gatherings, and hunting and fishing remain important traditional ways of life to the Wampanoag. In 2015, the federal government declared 150 acres of land in Mashpee and 170 acres of land in Taunton as the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s initial reservation,...