Wampanoag ('eastern people'). One of
the principal tribes of New England. Their proper territory appears to
have been the peninsula on the east shore of Narragansett Bay now included
in Bristol county, R. I., and the adjacent parts in Bristol county, Mass.
The Wampanoag chiefs ruled all the country extending
east from Narragansett Bay and Pawtucket river to the Atlantic coast,
including the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Rhode Island in
the bay was also at one time the property of this tribe, but was conquered
from them by the Narraganset, who occupied the west shore of the bay. On
the north their territory bordered that of the tribes of the Massachuset
confederacy. The Nauset of Cape Cod and the
Saconnet near Compton, R. I., although
belonging to the group, seem to have been in a measure independent.
Gosnold visited Martha's Vineyard in 1602 and "trafficked amicably with
the natives." Other explorers, before the landing of the Pilgrims, visited
the region and provoked the natives by ill treatment. Champlain found
those of Cape Cod unfriendly, probably on account of previous ill
treatment, and had an encounter with them. When the English settled at
Plymouth in 1620 the Wampanoag were said to have about 30 villages, and
must have been much stronger before the great pestilence of 1617 nearly
depopulated the southern New England coast. Their chief was
Massasoit, who made a treaty
of friendship with the colonists, which he faithfully observed until his
death, when he was succeeded by his son, known to the English as
King Philip. The bad
treatment of the whites and their encroachment upon the lands of the
Indians led this chief, then at the head of 500 warriors of his own tribe,
to form a combination of all the Indians from Merrimac river to the Thames
for the purpose of driving out or exterminating the whites. The war, which
began in 1675 and lasted 2 years, was the most destructive in the history
of New England and was most disastrous to the Indians. Philip and the
leading chiefs were killed, the Wampanoag and Narraganset were practically
exterminated, and the survivors fled to the interior tribes. Many of those
who surrendered were sold into slavery, and others joined the various
Praying villages in south Massachusetts. The greater part of the Wampanoag
who remained in the country joined the Saconnet. The Indians of Cape Cod
and Martha's Vineyard generally remained faithful to the whites, the
latter persistently refusing to comply with Philip's solicitations to join
him in the contest.
The principal village of the Wampanoag, where the head
chief resided, was Pokanoket. Other villages probably belonging to the
tribe were:
