The Wampanoag, also rendered Wôpanâak, are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands currently based in southeastern Massachusetts and formerly parts of eastern Rhode Island. Their historical territory includes the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.
Today, two Wampanoag tribes are federally recognized:
A Pukwudgie, also spelled Puk-Wudjie (another spelling, Puck-wudj-ininee, translated by Henry Schoolcraft as "little wild man of the woods that vanishes"), is a human-like creature of Wampanoag folklore, found in Delaware, Prince Edward Island, and parts of Indiana and Massachusetts, sometimes said to be two to three feet (0.61 to 0.91 m) tall.
A Key into the Language of America or An help to the Language of the Natives in that part of America called New England is a book written by Roger Williams in 1643 describing the Native American languages in New England in the 17th century, largely Narragansett, an Algonquian language. The book is the first published colonial study of a Native American language in English.
Williams was one of the founders of the Colony of Rhode Island and an exile from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The book was in part written to halt Massachusetts Bay's claims to Rhode Island's territory. Williams also argued against confiscating Indian land, arguing that the Indians had a right to payment. He had personally interacted with the Narragansett and the Wampanoag tribes as a missionary, friend, and trader, and he wrote favorably about elements of their culture. The book helped to introduce a number of American Indian loan words into the English lexicon.
The Massachusett language is an Algonquian language of the Algic language family that was formerly spoken by several peoples of eastern coastal and southeastern Massachusetts. In its revived form, it is spoken in four Wampanoag communities. The language is also known as Natick or Wôpanâak (Wampanoag), and historically as Pokanoket, Indian or Nonantum.
The language is most notable for its community of literate Native Americans and for the number of translations of religious texts into the language. John Eliot's translation of the Christian Bible in 1663 using the Natick dialect, known as Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God, was the first printed in the Americas, the first Bible translated by a non-native speaker, and one of the earliest examples of a Bible translation into a previously unwritten language. Literate Native American ministers and teachers taught literacy to the elites and other members of their communities, influencing a widespread acceptance. This is attested in the numerous court petitions, church records, praying town administrative records, notes on book margins, personal letters, and widespread distribution of other translations of religious tracts throughout the colonial period.
The Patuxet were a Native American band of the Wampanoag tribal confederation. They lived primarily in and around modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, and were among the first Native Americans encountered by European settlers in the region in the early 17th century. Most of the population subsequently died of epidemic infectious diseases. The last of the Patuxet – an individual named Tisquantum (a.k.a. "Squanto"), who played an important role in the survival of the Pilgrim colony at Plymouth – died in 1622.