Colonization and the Wampanoag Story

Until now, you've only heard one side of the story: the "discovery" of America told by Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims, and the Colonists. Here's the true story of America from the Indigenous perspective.

When you think about the beginning of the American story, what comes to mind? Three ships in 1492, or perhaps buckled hats and shoes stepping off of the Mayflower, ready to start a new country. But the truth is, Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims, and the Colonists didn't arrive to a vast, empty land ready to be developed. They arrived to find people and communities living in harmony with the land they had inhabited for thousands of years, and they quickly disrupted everything they saw.

From its "discovery" by Europeans to the first Thanksgiving, the story of America's earliest days has been carefully misrepresented. Told from the perspective of the New England Indigenous Nations that these outsiders found when they arrived, this is the true story of how America as we know it today began.

Linda Coombs is the program director of the Aquinnah Cultural Center. She is an author and historian from the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head and lives with her family in the Wampanoag Community in Mashpee on Cape Cod. Coombs began a museum career by interning at the Boston Children's Museum as part of its Native American Program, where she and her peers, including Narragansett elder Paulla Dove Jennings, wrote children's books for the museum, illustrating Native American culture from a Native American perspective. She later worked for nearly three decades with the Wampanoag Indigenous Program at Plimoth Plantation, including 15 years as the program's associate director.