Wampanoag

Relations With White Settlers

The arrival of white settlers dramatically changed the Wampanoag, given their position along the coastal lands where European ships first arrived. The first contacts in the late 17th century did not favor the Wampanoag. Despite welcoming the settlers, many of the Wampanoag, both men and women, were taken into slavery. A series of deadly epidemics between 1615 and 1617 (forensic anthropologists believe the cause to be Weil's Syndrome, a virus contracted from animals, most likely introduced into the region by itinerant French trappers) so greatly reduced the Wampanoag's numbers (by some estimates nearly 80 percent) that there was little resistance to the growing numbers of English settlers. Given the growing threat from far stronger tribes around them, the Wampanoag looked to the settlers as potential allies.

In the early 1620s, Sachem Massasoit, along with Squanto, one of those taken into slavery but who had escaped and returned to Massachusetts, led the tribe's initial gestures of accommodation, particularly to the religious separatists known as the Puritans, who had little sense of how to survive in the wilderness. The Wampanoag shared critical information about farming the land, building shelters, and hunting. Squanto was instrumental in structuring a land deal that secured nearly 12,000 acres for the Puritans. Although historians cannot be sure how much is folklore, traditional [Page 2148]accounts of the first Thanksgiving suggest that it may have been a harvest celebration between the Puritans and the Wampanoag.

Plymouth Plantation is a living history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, replicating Plymouth Colony, which was established in the 17th century. Members of the Wampanoag tribe were pushed westward by English settlers.

However, over the next decades, as the number of settlers grew, Wampanoag leaders became alarmed as English efforts continued to both convert them to Christianity and limit their presence to specially designated communes, which gradually moved the tribe westward. That created sufficient alarm that when a powerful sachem, Wamsutta, the oldest son of Massasoit, died mysteriously after a diplomatic meeting with the English settlers, suspicions emerged that he had been poisoned. After Wamsutta's younger brother, Metacomet (whom Massasoit had given the Christian name Philip), assumed power, he would lead what would become the most organized—and bloodiest—Native American resistance in New England.

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