Ben Franklin's world is a production of the

Omaha Institute and this series is made possible with support

from Mass Humanities.

With numerous communities still around, Nash being one, we have a Quinter, we have

Tropiquitic, we have Picass it, we get Secon, Poconoacit, Heron Pond. So there are communities still existing today and one thing I want people to remember is that we're still here, we still have a lot of culture still there and never use us in past tense. Past tense means we're not here, we are still there.

Deraius Coombs is the director of Wampanoag and Algonquian interpretive training

at the Plymouth Patuxet Museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The original homeland of Wampano overall is large pots of Massachusetts going in parts of

Rhode Island, and for Wampano Nation we probably numbered over 100,000 at one time.

Today is maybe about 15,000 and amongst that 100,000 at one time was probably over 70 Wampanoag

communities.

By the 17th century, the Wapanoag homelands occupied parts of the East Coast of North America.

From West Augusta, what is today Weymouth, Massachusetts,

East to Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket in Martha's Vineyard,

south to Poconoquet, what is now the area around Bristol and Warren

in Northeastern Rhode Island.

And we're located right on a river.

It's called the Ill River.

And this river right here provides transportation.

We take our Michouinoxes boats for traveling for diplomacy for fishing for trading

the rivers are more or less considered to be the highways you know that's how you got around inside your machine ashes, right?

Living along the Atlantic coast in spring and summer and traveling inland during

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