The people the Pilgrims met here were not newcomers. The Wampanoag and their Nauset relations had been on this land for more than 12,000 years before December 8, 1620, when an armed encounter at what is now First Encounter Beach in Eastham marked European contact on Cape Cod. The story didn't end there. In Mashpee — the Wampanoag homeland — the tribe's oldest surviving church still stands near Route 28, its construction date disputed but its endurance not. A tribal museum in the same town traces Wampanoag life from the Stone Age forward. On Martha's Vineyard, the Aquinnah Cliffs rise from land the Wampanoag have held for some 10,000 years, and the tribe still makes the rules about what you may do there. Federally recognized only since 2007, with roughly 3,200 enrolled citizens today, this is the presence that preceded everything else the Cape became.
