MASHPEE BAND OF THE WAMPANOAG INDIANS
The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe is one of two federally recognized Native American Tribes in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Mashpee was sometimes referred to as Marshpee. The Indian district of Mashpee was incorporated as a town on May 28, 1870 by Chapter 293 of the Acts of 1870. Background information on the common lands and history of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe follow.
1834 Petition of the Mashpee Indians to the Legislature
“In thus enfranchising the Indians and conferring on them the rights of citizens, it was not the intention of the Legislature to give at once to the several tribes, or to the individual Indians composing those tribes, the absolute and unqualified control of common lands occupied by them. The St. of 1869, c. 463, provides that any land, known as Indian land, held by any Indian in severalty, or which has been set off to any Indian, shall be the property of him and his heirs in fee simple.”
Darius Coombs et al., petitioners, 127 Mass. 278, 279-280 (1879)
“In bestowing the privileges of citizenship upon these wards of the Commonwealth, and giving a title in fee simple to all lands held by them in severalty under existing provisions of law, it was not only a proper but a wise exercise of power for the Legislature to frame provisions by which common lands belonging to the town or the tribe, and the proceeds of the sale of such lands, should be divided.”
Id at 281.
Harvard University Corporation Papers relating to the Marshpee Indians