Interior House Painter Mashpee MA

Mashpee, Massachusetts
Town
Mashpee Town Hall
Location in Barnstable County and the state of Massachusetts.
Coordinates: 41°38′54″N 70°28′54″W / 41.64833°N 70.48167°W / 41.64833; -70.48167Coordinates: 41°38′54″N 70°28′54″W / 41.64833°N 70.48167°W / 41.64833; -70.48167
Country	United States
State	Massachusetts
County	Barnstable
Settled	1660
Incorporated	May 28, 1870
Government
• Type	Open town meeting
Area
• Total	27.2 sq mi (70.5 km)
• Land	23.4 sq mi (60.6 km2)
• Water	3.8 sq mi (9.9 km)
Elevation	55 ft (17 m)
Population  (2020)
• Total	15,060
• Density	644/sq mi (248.5/km2)
Time zone	UTC−5 (Eastern)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−4 (Eastern)
ZIP Code	02649
Area code	508/774
FIPS code	25-39100
GNIS feature ID	0618256
Website	www.mashpeema.gov

Mashpee ( Wampanoag: Mâseepee) is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, on Cape Cod. The population was 15,060 as of 2020. The town is the site of the headquarters and most members of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, one of two federally recognized Wampanoag groups.

For geographic and demographic information on specific parts of the town of Mashpee, please see the articles on Mashpee Neck, Monomoscoy Island, New Seabury, Popponesset, Popponesset Island, Seabrook, and Seconsett Island.

History

Cape Cod was occupied for more than ten thousand years by indigenous peoples. The historic Algonquian-speaking Wampanoag were the native people encountered by the English colonists here and in the area of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the seventeenth century. The Wampanoag also controlled considerable coastal area. These two cultures would interact, shaping each other for decades.

After English colonists arrived, they began to settle the area of present-day Mashpee in 1658 with the assistance of the missionary Richard Bourne, from the neighboring town of Sandwich. In 1660 the colonists allowed those Christian Wampanoag who had been converted about 50 square miles (130 km) in the English settlement. Beginning in 1665, the Wampanoag governed themselves with a court of law and trials according to English custom (they had long governed themselves according to their own customs).

Following their defeat in King Philip’s War (1675–1676), the Wampanoag of the mainland were resettled with the Sakonnet in present-day Rhode Island. Others of the people were brought, together with the Nauset, into the praying towns, such as Mashpee, in Barnstable County. There were also Wampanoag on Martha’s Vineyard and other areas.

The colonists designated Mashpee on Cape Cod as the largest Indian reservation in Massachusetts. The town’s name is an Anglicization of a native name, mass-nippe: mass is “great”, or “greater” (see Massachusetts), and nippe is “water”. The name has been translated as “the greater cove” or “great pond,” or “land near great cove”, where the water being referenced is Wakeby Pond, which is greater at one end.

In the year 1763, the British Crown designated Mashpee as a plantation, against the will of the Wampanoag. Designation as a plantation meant that the area governed by the Mashpee Wampanoag was integrated into the colonial district of Mashpee. The colony gave the natives the “right” to elect their own officials to maintain order in their area, but otherwise subjected them to colonial government. The population of the plantation declined steadily due to the conditions placed upon the Wampanoag. They also suffered from encroachment on their lands by the English.

Following the American Revolutionary War, the town in 1788 revoked Mashpee self-government, which European-American officials considered a failure. They appointed a committee, consisting of five European-American members, to supervise the Mashpee. William Apess, a Pequot Methodist preacher, helped the Mashpee Wampanoag lead a peaceful protest of this action, and the governor threatened a military response.

In 1834, the state returned a certain level of self-government to the Wampanoag, although they were not completely autonomous. With the idea that emulating European-American farming would encourage assimilation, in 1842 the state broke up some of the Wampanoag communal land. It distributed 2,000 acres (8.1 km) of their 13,000-acre (53 km²) property in allotments of 60-acre (240,000 m) parcels to heads of households, so that each family could have individual ownership for subsistence farming.

The legislature passed laws against the encroachments on Wampanoag land by European Americans, but did not enforce them. The competing settlers also stole wood from the reservation. It was a large region, once rich in wood, fish and game, and desired by white settlers, who envied the growing community of Mashpee. The Mashpee Indians suffered more conflicts with their white neighbors than did other more isolated or less desirable Indian settlements in the state.

In 1870 the state approved the incorporation of Mashpee as a town, the second-to-last jurisdiction on the Cape to undergo the process. Ultimately the Wampanoag lost control of their land and self-government. Many of their descendants have remained in the area and identified as Mashpee by their communal culture.