SDC INSTITUTE'S SUNDAY FEATURE | HISTORY & CULTURE
The Wampanoag After the “First Thanksgiving”: A Nation’s Survival Beyond the Myth
AQUINNAH, Mass. [IFS] — When the November sun lifts over the bluffs of Martha’s Vineyard, spreading its early light across gray Atlantic waters and wind-carved dunes, it illuminates a homeland that predates the United States by thousands of years. This is Aquinnah, where members of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head — who have reclaimed their traditional name as the Aquinnah Wampanoag — continue the practices of their ancestors, the People of the First Light.
Their history is often reduced to a single scene — a shared meal with the newly arrived Pilgrims in 1621. But the story of the Wampanoag Nation, and what followed that encounter, is far more complex. It is a narrative shaped by epidemic disease, political negotiation, war, cultural resilience, and a centuries-long fight for identity in the face of erasure.
This Sunday, as millions prepare to observe the American tradition known as Thanksgiving, historians and tribal leaders urge the country to revisit the fuller truth behind one of its foundational myths.
A Civilization at Its Height — and a Society Already in Crisis
At the dawn of the 17th century, the Wampanoag Confederacy consisted of more than 60 villages spread across present-day Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They lived in dome-shaped wetu or nushwatu, cultivated extensive fields of maize, beans, and squash, and maintained a sophisticated political system led by a sachem whose authority moved through matrilineal lines.
But between 1616 and 1619, before the Mayflower ever appeared off Cape Cod, the Wampanoag were struck by a catastrophic epidemic brought by earlier European contact. Modern researchers suggest leptospirosis, smallpox, or viral hepatitis as likely culprits.
The impact was devastating: an estimated 40,000 Wampanoag people died, wiping out entire communities and weakening the Confederacy’s ability to defend its territory.
“By 1620, the Pilgrims stepped ashore not into a wilderness, but into a homeland hollowed by disease,” says Dr. Paula Peters, a Mashpee Wampanoag historian. “Fields were already cleared, villages stood empty. It was a world interrupted.”
The 1621 Alliance: Diplomacy, Not Folklore
Against this backdrop, Wampanoag sachem Massasoit Ousamequin forged a strategic alliance with the fledgling Plymouth colony. The treaty, signed in March 1621, established mutual defense — a necessary hedge against rival tribes and against the unpredictable behavior of the English newcomers.
The so-called “First Thanksgiving,” a three-day harvest gathering that autumn, was not a ceremonial invitation but an extension of this fragile political relationship. Contemporary accounts indicate that the Wampanoag arrived armed and in significant numbers — likely to assess the colony’s military capacity and to honor their treaty obligations.
For decades, Massasoit maintained a cautious peace. But as more English settlers arrived, tensions over land, livestock, and legal jurisdiction grew increasingly volatile.
The Spiral Toward War
By the 1670s, English expansion had overtaken much of the Wampanoag homeland. Colonists encroached on hunting territories, demanded submission to English courts, and used debts and contracts to seize land. In some communities, Christian missionaries pushed aggressively to reorganize Wampanoag governance around European norms.
When Massasoit’s son, Metacom — known to the English as King Philip — succeeded his father, he inherited a landscape of broken trust and mounting pressure.
The tipping point came in 1675, when English authorities executed three Wampanoag men on dubious charges. The resulting conflict, King Philip’s War, would become one of the deadliest per-capita wars in early American history.
The war lasted only 14 months, but its effects were seismic:
-
Thousands of Indigenous people were killed.
-
Survivors were enslaved, sold to the Caribbean, or forced into refugee settlements.
-
Wampanoag political independence was destroyed.
-
English colonies seized land at a pace previously unimaginable.
“The war became the template for future colonial-Native conflicts,” says Dr. Jean O’Brien, a scholar of Indigenous history at the University of Minnesota. “And it ensured that the Thanksgiving story would later be retold in a way that avoided the uncomfortable truths.”
Reorganization, Resistance, and Survival
Despite the near-total devastation of the 17th century, the Wampanoag people endured. Over the next two centuries, they reorganized into surviving communities, including Mashpee on Cape Cod and Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard.
Their struggles persisted:
-
The 19th century brought state control over tribal affairs.
-
The 20th century introduced assimilation policies and the erosion of Native land rights.
-
Wôpanâak, the Wampanoag language, fell silent as boarding schools suppressed Indigenous languages.
But by the late 20th century, a renaissance was underway.
The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe obtained federal recognition in 2007 after decades of petitioning. The Aquinnah Wampanoag maintained recognition status since 1987 and reclaimed their traditional name, shedding the colonial “Gay Head” label.
Perhaps most remarkable is the revitalization of the Wôpanâak language, restored through a community-driven effort led by linguist Jessie Little Doe Baird. Today, Wampanoag children once again speak the language their ancestors used thousands of years ago.
A Tradition Reexamined
While the United States celebrates Thanksgiving as a holiday of gratitude, many Wampanoag mark it as a National Day of Mourning, a commemoration of both the losses suffered and the resilience shown.
“It’s not about rejecting the idea of gratitude,” says Tobias Vanderhoop, former Chair of the Aquinnah Wampanoag. “It’s about insisting on truth — that what happened after 1621 was not a peaceful coexistence, but a long struggle for our people to survive.”
For the Wampanoag, the real story lies not in a single meal but in centuries of endurance: the survival of culture, the reclaiming of land, the revival of language, and the ongoing affirmation of identity.
People of the First Light, Still Here
Today, as dawn breaks across Mashpee, across Aquinnah, and across the ancestral grounds of southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, it falls on a people who have never left.
No comments:
Post a Comment