Yet Wampanoag people survived.

Languages and cultural practices endured, changed, and in some cases have been actively revitalized.

The Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, begun in the late twentieth century, is one of the most remarkable examples.

Using historical Wampanoag-language documents, including a seventeenth-century Bible translation, community members and linguists reconstructed a language that had not been spoken conversationally for generations.

That modern work creates a striking contrast with the Squanto myth.

The old story treats Wampanoag knowledge as something transferred to English settlers in the past.

Language reclamation shows Wampanoag knowledge continuing into the future.

Tisquantum belongs to a living history, not a vanished one.

What He Could Not Have Known

Tisquantum died before he could see how completely English colonization would reshape southern New England.