Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (2,600) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 United States ( Massachusetts) |
|
| Languages | |
| English, Wampanoag | |
| Religion | |
| traditional tribal religion | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| other Wampanoag people |
The Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Tribal Council, Inc., formerly known as the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, is one of two federally recognized tribes of Wampanoag people in Massachusetts. Recognized in 2007, they are headquartered in Mashpee on Cape Cod. The other tribe is the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) on Martha's Vineyard.
In 2014 the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe consists of more than 2600 enrolled members. In 2015 their 170 acres in Mashpee and an additional 150 acres in Taunton, Massachusetts were taken into trust on their behalf by the US Department of Interior, establishing these parcels as reservation land.
Indigenous peoples lived on Cape Cod for at least ten thousand years. The historic Algonquian-speaking Wampanoag were the native people encountered by the English colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the seventeenth century. The Wampanoag also controlled considerable coastal area. They were one of the several Algonquian-speaking tribes in what are now considered Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The Wampanoag and English (later European Americans) interacted and shaped each other's cultures for centuries, with intermarriage also taking place.
English colonists began to settle the area of present-day Mashpee, Massachusetts in 1658 with the assistance of the missionary Richard Bourne, from the neighboring town of Sandwich. In 1660 the colonists "allowed" those Wampanoag who had converted to Christianity about 50 square miles (130 km2) in the English settlement. Beginning in 1665, the Wampanoag governed themselves with a court of law and trials according to English custom (they had long governed themselves according to their own customs). Such a settlement was referred to by the English as a "praying town."
Following the Wampanoag defeat in King Philip's War (1675–1676), those on the mainland were resettled with the Sakonnet in present-day Rhode Island. Other Wampanoag and the Nauset were forced to settle in the praying towns, such as Mashpee, in Barnstable County on Cape Cod. The colonists sold many Wampanoag men into slavery in the Caribbean, and enslaved women and children in New England.
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