Geologists estimate Cape Cod and the islands were formed by glaciers 10,000 years ago. Anthropologists indicate that the Wampanoag inhabited all of southeastern Massachusetts 12,000 years ago. 

The Wampanoag people have a story that was passed down through oral history of the giant benevolent being, Moshup, who dragged his foot through the land to allow water to fill in and form the islands of Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and Noman’s Land. He also taught the people to fish, catch whales, and presided over the people’s destiny.

This story, which was passed down through generations, was almost always told in Wôpanâak, the language of the People of the First Light. However, some anthropologists invalidated oral histories of Native people and ignored knowledge of their past, which led to stories and a language being lost. [1]

Four hundred years ago, the Wampanoag met the Pilgrims in Provincetown and brought them food at Plymouth in 1621 at what is termed the first Thanksgiving. In 1648, Martha’s Vineyard’s Thomas Mayhew proselytized Hiacoomes, who is believed to have been the first Native converted to Christianity. This was thanks to Hiacoomes and Mayhew having learned to speak each other’s languages.[2]

Devoted to resurrecting Wôpanâak, jessie little doe baird spent many years studying the language. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology became involved when baird began working with the late Ken Hale, a renowned linguistic scholar from MIT where baird earned her master’s in Algonquian Linguistics.[5] Once her research was complete, jessie little doe baird developed an introduction to the grammar of the language and created a curriculum for teaching it with a dictionary that has over 11,000 words.

Propitiously, and likely with ancestors who had greeted the Pilgrims smiling on, jessie little doe baird and her husband Jason Baird had a daughter, Mae Alice. Born on July 4, 2004 during the annual Mashpee Wampanoag Powwow, “kuweeqâhsun” was the first word baird spoke to her baby, which means “you are in the light.” It was the perfect introduction to the child who would become the first fluent Wôpanâak speaker in seven generations.[6]

Now Vice-Chairwoman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Tribal Council, jessie little doe baird taught Mae Alice to speak Wôpanâak, and in October 2012, she hired Jennifer Weston to oversee the development of a school to teach other Native children their language. Weston, who now serves as director of WLRP and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s Language