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Wampanoag

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The Wampanoag (Wôpanâak in current orthography) are a Native American people. In 1600 they lived in what is now southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, including Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, and had a population of about 12,000. The name means "easterners," probably applied either by themselves to refer to their location in respect to other tribes, or by the other tribes to describe the Wampanoag.

Wampanoag leaders included Squanto, Samoset, Metacomet (King Philip), and Massasoit. The tradition of Thanksgiving was adopted from this tribe and its interaction with the Pilgrims.

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Name

John Smith named the Wampanoag Pakanoket in 1616, after the village of their chief Massasoit near today's Bristol, Rhode Island. This name was frequently referred to in early records and accounts. The word Wapanoos first appeared on Adrian Block's 1614 map and was probably an expression for all tribes living in the Northeast region. Other synonyms include Wapenock, Massasoit, and Philips Indians.

Wampanoag language

The Wampanoag spoke (and some still speak) Wôpanâôtâôk, a member of the Algonquian language family. It is also sometimes called Massachusett or Natick. After contact with European settlers, the Roman alphabet was used to provide an orthography for Wôpanâôt8âôk. Surviving texts include the first Bible published in the Western hemisphere (a translation by John Eliot, published in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1663), and a large body of legal material as well as personal letters. English words borrowed from Wampanoag include squaw (shqâ, which in Wampanoag was not a derrogatory term, but is the agentive female suffix of certain nouns); wampum, the old shell currency; skunk; and mugwump, as well as the geographical names of many places in Massachusetts, such as Aquinnah, Manomet, Hyannis, etc. 

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Although the language became extinct in the 19th century, serious efforts have been undertaken recently (as the result of a 1993 initiative of the Wampanoag Nation, including the tribes of Mashpee and Aquinnah) to revive the language, on the basis of the surviving texts and evidence from neighboring Algonquian languages such as Passamaquoddy that are still spoken. The project was founded by Jessie Little Doe, a Mashpee Wampanoag, and Helen Manning, an Aquinnah Wampanoag. These two women founded the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project. The project has been carried out with assistance from linguists of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including the late Ken Hale and his students Jessie Little Doe and Norvin Richards. At present, an active program of language classes is underway, and there are children being raised with Wôpanâôt8âôk as their first language for the first time in almost two centuries.

Wampanoag culture

The Wampanoag subsisted, as did other tribes of the Eastern Woodlands, on the "Three Sisters" (maize, beans, and squash) along with the fruits of hunting, fishing and gathering. Unlike tribes of the Iroquois, the Wampanoag lived in wetus instead of longhouses.

Prior to the landing of the English Pilgrims in 1620, the population had been drastically reduced by epidemics spreading from the French colonies. Due to the influence of Massasoit, the Wampanoag maintained strained but peaceful relations with the colonists until the violence of King Philip's War. Massasoit's son, Metacomet or "King Philip" declared war on the pilgrims for several reasons, among them: his people were being displaced by the growing English population; some of the Puritan (Calvinist) colonists were successful in converting the Wampanoag to their faith - sometimes willingly and sometimes by force; and the King was unhappy with the negative cultural influence on Wampanoag society. The war was not successful, however. At the end of it, most of the Wampanoag and their Narraganset allies had been eliminated. Survivors fled to other tribes in New England. Some of the tribe on the islands had not been involved in the dispute and provided shelter for their kinsmen. Wampanoag in the hands of the Plymouth Colony government were either relocated or sold into slavery. Wampanoags sold into slavery in Bermuda included Metacomet's son, and by some accounts his wife also. Many other Algonquian peoples (notably Pequots)were sold into slavery in Bermuda, as were Native Americans possibly from as far afield as Mexico, and made up a significant portion of Bermuda's original 17th Century population.

The Wampanoag today

About 3,000 Wampanoag still live in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Many in the Cape Cod area are descended from the now extinct Nauset tribe. The most important communities, in terms of population are in Mashpee and, on Martha's Vineyard, in Aquinnah (Gay Head). The branch of the tribe on Martha's Vineyard have a reservation recognized by the United States Government.

In Bermuda, where tribal affiliations have been erased by history, most of the black population (those who trace most of their ancestry in Bermuda beyond the latter end of the 19th Century) have significant Native American (and European) ancestry. On one island in the archipelago, particularly, Saint David's, identification with Native American forebears has survived, even where culture and tribal affiliation has been lost to record. Numbers of islanders claim descent from Metacomet, and the Wampanoag Nation, along with other Algonquian peoples, have recently made attempts to reconnect with their Bermudian relatives and to strengthen the ties of blood.

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