The Wampanoags are perhaps most famous for greeting and befriending the Pilgrims in
1620, bringing them corn and turkey to help them through the difficult winter and starting a
Thanksgiving tradition that is still observed today. Unfortunately, the relationship soon soured.
As more British colonists arrived in Massachusetts, they began displacing Wampanoag people from
their traditional lands, particularly by plying them with alcohol and obtaining their signatures
on land sale documents while they were drunk. The Wampanoag leader Metacomet, known as "King
Philip" to the English, tried to get this practice outlawed, and when the British refused, a war
ensued. The British won decisively, sold many of the Wampanoag survivors into slavery, drove the
rest into hiding, and forbade the use of the Massachusett language and Wampanoag tribal names.
Only in 1928 were the Wampanoag people able to reclaim their tribal identity.