Mashpee Indian Land Case Records

In 1976, the Mashpee Wampanoag brought action against the town of Mashpee, Massachusetts and its local landholders in an attempt to recover lands allegedly taken from it in 1870. The tribe sought the return of 11,000 acres of undeveloped land in the town of Mashpee, but a preliminary trial first required the tribe to prove that they did, in fact, legally constitute a "tribe." Formally unrecognized as such by the federal government and Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Mashpee Wampanoag are the tribe that greeted the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and were present at the colonists's first Thanksgiving. The defense argued that since the time of the early European colonists, the descendants Mashpee Wampanoag who were not killed by European diseases carried by the colonists had intermarried and assimilated into the wider population to such an extent that the tribe no longer existed. Though the plaintiffs argued that that they still consituted a functioning tribe, it is nonetheless true that in 1976, the tribe that had once numbered an estimated 25,000 before the 17th century had decreased to only about 400 people still living in Mashpee and the surrounding area as a result of death, intermarriage and migration.

The 40 day trial, which convened 17 October 1977 in U.S. District Court in Boston, called numerous Mashpees and expert witnesses to the stand, including the donor of this collection, Jeanne Guillemin, a witness for the defense. While the plaintiffs argued that they constituted a tribe in a sociological and anthropological sense, Guillemin testified that the group had no political autonomy and therefore could not be considered a true tribe, a view other witnesses for the defense supported. In January 1978, a jury found that the Mashpee Wampanoags did not constitute a tribe at the time the lawsuit originated, nor did they constitute a tribe at several other key points in their history. The judge in the case, Walter J. Skinner, dismissed the land claim case. In 1979, the verdict was upheld by the First Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case later in the year.

As of February 2006, the time of processing, the Mashpee Wampanoags's petition for recognition as a tribe by the Bureau of Indian Affairs has still not been resolved, but a preliminary ruling is expected in March 2006.