The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (formerly Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Tribal Council, Inc.) is one of two federally recognized tribes of Wampanoag people in Massachusetts, United States. Recognized in 2007, they are headquartered in Mashpee on Cape Cod. The other Wampanoag tribe is the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) on Martha's Vineyard.
The tribe has its own health services, police force, court system, and education departments.
In March 2024, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe had approximately 3,200 enrolled citizens. Their 170 acres in Mashpee, as well as an additional 150 acres in Taunton, Massachusetts, were taken into trust on their behalf by the US Department of Interior in 2015, establishing these parcels as reservation land.
History The historic Algonquian-speaking Wampanoag are one of 69 tribes of the original Wampanoag Nation; they are the Native people encountered by the English colonists of the New Plymouth Colony in the 17th century. The Wampanoag also controlled a considerable amount of coastal area. They are one of the several Algonquian-speaking tribal nations in what are now considered Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The Wampanoag and English (later European Americans) have interacted and shaped each other's cultures for centuries, with marriage between the groups also taking place.
English colonists began to settle in and around the traditional tribal community of present-day Mashpee, Massachusetts, which was also called Marshapoag (Big Pond), and Saukatukett (South Sea) when Rev Leverech of Sandwich began preaching there in the 1630s. He was later replaced in 1658 by missionary Rev Richard Bourne, from the neighboring town of Sandwich. In 1629, the Mashpee Wampanoag, along with eight other Wampanoag tribes, granted “Indian Title” to the King of England to a tract of land that would become Plymouth Colony. In 1660, Bourne assisted the tribe in codifying the territory in at least one of two deeds. Beginning in 1665, the Wampanoag, petitioned the General Court for Mashpee’s status as a ‘praying town’, a form of government established by missionary Rev John Eliot and confirmed by the General Court of the colony. In May 1666, a delegation of English leaders, including Richard Bourne, John Eliot and his son, John Cotton, Thomas Mayhew, and two Wampanoag interpreters convened a week-long meeting in Mashpee to hear from the Tribe regarding their petition (hearing the confessions) and report back to the General Court. The petition being granted, the Mashpees now governed themselves via the law of ‘praying towns’. Praying Town status afforded tribes protection of the English Crown and a greater chance to remain on their homelands. While this helped to maintain tenure in the land, these new laws also patterned English systems of justice and took away freedoms of the Wampanoag to live traditionally.
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 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.
The colonists designated Mashpee on Cape Cod as the largest Native American reservation in Massachusetts. The town's name is an Anglicization of a Native name, Mâseepee: mâs meaning "large" and, upee meaning "water." It is named for Mashpee/Wakeby Pond, the largest fresh water pond on Cape Cod.
In 1763, the British Crown designated Mashpee as a plantation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, against the will of the Wampanoag. By this designation, the Crown gave the colonial district of Mashpee authority to integrate into its territory the area governed by the Mashpee Wampanoag. The colony gave the natives the "right" to elect their own officials to maintain order in their area, but otherwise subjected them to colonial government. The Wampanoag population of the plantation declined steadily due to social disruption and infectious disease contracted from the colonists. They also suffered from continuing encroachment on their lands by the English.
Following the American Revolutionary War, the State in 1788 revoked Mashpee self-government, which European-American officials considered a failure. They appointed a committee of overseers, consisting of five European-American members, to supervise the Mashpee. When William Apess, a Pequot Methodist preacher, helped the Mashpee Wampanoag lead a peaceful protest in 1837 against the overseers, the governor threatened a military response. Rule by the overseers resulted in the loss of additional Wampanoag lands.
Due to intermarriage between Black and Wampanoag people dating to the 1700s, many Mashpee Wampanoag people have African ancestry.
19th-century restrictions and land loss In 1834, the state returned a certain level of self-government to the Wampanoag, although they were not completely autonomous. With the idea that emulating European-American farming would encourage assimilation, in 1842, the state broke up some of the Wampanoag communal land. It distributed of their property in allotments of parcels to heads of households, so that each family could have individual ownership for subsistence farming.
The legislature passed laws prohibiting European Americans from encroaching on Wampanoag land, but the state did not enforce these. The competing settlers also stole wood from the reservation. The Wampanoag held a large region, once rich in wood, fish and game, which was desired by white settlers. They envied the growing community of Mashpee. The Mashpee Indians suffered more conflicts with their white neighbors than did other more isolated or less desirable Indian settlements in the state.Handbook of North American Indians. Chapter: "Indians of Southern New England and Long Island, late period," p. 178ff; The Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe official website ; Mashpee Wampanoag Nation webpage; Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah webpage
In 1870, the state, against a vote of the tribe, incorporated the Town of Mashpee as a town. It was the second-to-last jurisdiction on the Cape to undergo the process. Mashpee Wampanoag held every seat in Town Government until 1967. With European Americans moving to Mashpee in growing numbers and taking seats in town government, ultimately the Mashpee Wampanoag lost control of town government. The majority of the Tribe’s citizens live in and around Mashpee today. Many also worked on whaling and other ships that operated from Cape and other Massachusetts ports in the 19th century. They continue to identify as Mashpee Wampanoag by their common culture. Census rolls of the Tribe grew from marriages and mixed-race children as they formed unions with neighbors.
20th century In the early 1900s, tribal members Ebenezer Quippish and Nelson D. Simons helped lead a cultural revival in Mashpee and to rededicate the Old Indian Meeting House.
Beginning in the 1970s, the Mashpee Wampanoag worked to regain its political power; it sought federal recognition of its tribal status by the federal government. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council, Inc was incorporated in 1972 under the leadership of its first president, Russell "Fast Turtle" Peters. In 1974, the Council petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs for recognition. Like other "landless" tribes of the Atlantic Coast area, they encountered difficulties documenting their continuity. The recognition process required documentation of continued existence since first contact with European arrivals. In many areas, outsiders assumed that, as tribes became multi-racial, they no longer were "Indians." But the Mashpee Wampanoag had experience in continuing their culture, and most of their descendants identified as Wampanoag. The federal acknowledgment petition documents were a collection of 54,000 pages before the petition was considered by the Department of Interior's Office of Federal Acknowledgement.
In 1976, the tribe filed a landmark land claim lawsuit, suing the Town of Mashpee for the return of ancestral homelands. The US District Court ruled that, lacking federal recognition as a tribe, the Mashpee Wampanoag people had no standing to pursue the land claim. The tribe continued to pursue federal recognition for three decades, gaining it in 2007.
21st century In 2000, the Mashpee Wampanoag Council was headed by chairman Glenn Marshall. Marshall led the group until 2007, when it was disclosed that he had a prior conviction for rape, had lied about having a military record, and was under investigation associated with the tribe's casino lobbying efforts."WampaGate – Glenn Marshall: There is still much to tell", Cape Cod Times, August 26, 2007.
Marshall was removed from office by the Tribe and was a succeeded by tribal council vice-chair Shawn Hendricks. He held the position until Marshall pleaded guilty in 2009 to federal charges of embezzling, wire fraud, mail fraud, tax evasion, and election finance law violations."Former Wampanoag leader sentenced", The Boston Globe, May 8, 2009."Marshall Timeline" , Cape Cod Times, August 25, 2007 Marshall had steered tens of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to politicians through the tribe's hired lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The latter was convicted of numerous charges in a much larger fraud scheme associated with Native American gaming, especially related to his representation of a Mississippi tribe.
On May 23, 2007, the Mashpee Tribe gained formal federal recognition as a tribe. Led by its chairman Shawn Hendricks, who was elected to succeed Marshall, tribe representatives worked with Abramoff's lobbyist colleague Kevin A. Ring to pursue a plan to develop Indian gaming, as this seemed a route to generate revenues to help the tribe take care of its people."Cape tribe feels heat from lobbyist scandal" , Cape Cod Times, September 11, 2008. In 2008, Ring was indicted and convicted on federal corruption charges linked to his work for the Mashpee band.
During this period, there was considerable internal tension within the tribe. Tribal elders sought access to the tribal council records detailing the council's involvement in the Ring scandal, filing a complaint in Barnstable Municipal Court. The tribal council voted to formally "shun" these members, banning these elders from the tribe for seven years. The federal government had also sought records from the tribe as part of its 2007 investigation into Abramoff and his colleagues."Fed letter demands 8 pages of tribe's letters to Abramoff, others" , Cape Cod Today, October 9, 2007.
In 2009 the tribe elected council member Cedric Cromwell to the position of council chair and president. Cromwell's campaign had promised reforms. He worked to distance himself from the previous chairmen, although he had served on the tribal council for the prior six years during which the Marshall and Abramoff scandals took place. He was among those who voted to shun tribal members who tried to investigate."Cedric Cromwell elected chairman" , Cape Cod Times, February 2, 2009. A challenge to Cromwell's election by defeated candidates, following allegations of tampering with voting and enrollment records, was filed with the Tribal Court.
Cromwell's administration has been hampered by a series of protests by elders over casino-related finances."Mashpee Wampanoag elders gather outside tribal headquarters yesterday, seeking information about the tribe's finances since Chairman Cedric Cromwell took over" , Cape Cod Times, September 24, 2009.Nellie Hicks Ramos v. Patricia Keliinui, 2009 Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Election Committee Chair, Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Court, January 17, 2012.