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The Wampanoag are a Native American people. In 1600 they lived in what is now south-eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, including Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, and had a population of about 12,000.
Wampanoag leaders included Squanto, King Philip, and Massasoit. The tradition of Thanksgiving was adopted from this tribe and its interaction with the Pilgrims.
They speak an Algonquin language and today have a population of about 3,000. The Wampanoag subsisted, as did other tribes of the Eastern Woodlands, on the "three sisters," corns, beans, and squash, along with the fruits of hunting, fishing and collecting.
Prior to the advent of the Pilgrims in 1620, the population had been drastically reduced by epidemics spreading from the French colonies. Due to the influence of Massasoit, the Wampanoag maintained peaceful relations with the Pilgrims until the violence of King Philip's War. At the end of that strife, most of the Wampanoag and their Narraganset allies had been eliminated. Survivors fled to other tribes in New England. Some of the tribe on the islands had not been involved in the dispute and provided shelter for their kinsmen. Wampanoag in the hands of the Colonial forces were either relocated or sold into slavery.
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