The Wampanoag were the Native American tribe that joined the Pilgrims for the “First Thanksgiving,” yet much of the common lore about that story is inaccurate.
For example, the Wampanoag weren’t invited to the Pilgrims’ feast; they showed up later.
Here’s what to know about the Wampanoag tribe and their role in the “First Thanksgiving.”
Who are the Wampanoag?
The Wampanoag are a Native American tribe that has inhabited present day Massachusetts and Eastern Rhode Island for over 10,000 years.
Jenaya Perry, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, competes during a women’s traditional dance competition at the Mashpee Wampanoag Powwow in 2023.
Did the Wampanoag help the Pilgrims?
The tradition Thanksgiving story says that the Native Americans helped the Pilgrims learn how to farm on American soil.
While the Wampanoag did eventually help the Pilgrims, it was a difficult decision. Past Europeans who had come to the area had raided Native villages and enslaved their people, and the Pilgrims had been stealing Native food and digging up their graves. Many tribes wanted to drive off or kill the new settlers.
But the Wampanoag were weakened by a recent pandemic and being pressured by a nearby tribe. Allowing the Pilgrims to settle and becoming allies could allow them to get access to weapons and coveted European goods.
Wampanoag leader Massasoit weighed the risks and concluded it was better to have the danger on his side than have to face it.
“We needed a friend,” Steven Peters, a spokesman for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, told the USA Today Network in 2020. “We needed an ally. That would have been a really difficult decision for them to make.”
The tribe eventually approached the Pilgrims in February, after about half of the Europeans had died during the first winter, and came to a kind of alliance where the Pilgrims received help and protection from the Wampanoag.
Plymouth Rock sits under a granite portico on the edge of the harbor where it has been said the Pilgrims landed in 1620. Their first stop was actually Provincetown, historians believe, as there is not a single reference to stepping on the rock in any known writings from the time. That doesn’t make Plymouth Rock any less popular, though. Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025
What happened at the first Thanksgiving?
In contrast to the traditional Thanksgiving story, the Pilgrims did not invite the Wampanoag to their feast.
Peters said that the Wampanoag heard muskets set off by the Pilgrims during their harvest, and taking the sound as a threat of battle, an army of Wampanoag lead by Massasoit Ousamequin approached the Pilgrim settlement. The Wampanoag eventually joined the feast after a tense encounter.
What happened after the first Thanksgiving?
The peace between the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims was short lived. In 1675, relationships would deteriorate into King Philip’s War, which resulted in the death, enslavement or displacement of most of the Native people living in southern New England.
Today, the Wampanoag survive and the Mashpee Wampanoag are a federally recognized tribe, despite centuries of systemic removal from their land, destruction of their culture and denial of their rights. As recently as 2020, the Trump administration rescinded the reservation status for the Mashpee Wampanoag, a move that the Biden administration reversed a year later.
“Out of the 69 tribes of just Wampanoag people who lived here pre-contact, only three — the Herring Pond, the Aquinnah and the Mashpee, plus a band of Assonet peoples, are still here,” Troy Currence, a medicine man with the Herring Pond Tribe, told the USA TODAY NETWORK in 2020. “We’re lucky to be one of them. We survived. We’re still here. We have a chance to reclaim our language and our history and re-educate people. We didn’t go away, we adapted.”
Contributing: Eryn Dion, Catherine Messier
This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Which Native American tribe joined Pilgrims at ‘first’ Thanksgiving?
