The Wampanoag and English (later European Americans) have interacted and shaped each other's cultures for centuries, with marriage between the groups also taking place.

Praying Town status afforded tribes protection of the English Crown and a greater chance to remain on their homelands.

While this helped to maintain tenure in the land, these new laws also patterned English systems of justice and took away freedoms of the Wampanoag to live traditionally.

The Wampanoag population of the plantation declined steadily due to social disruption and infectious disease contracted from the colonists.

When William Apess, a Pequot Methodist preacher, helped the Mashpee Wampanoag lead a peaceful protest in 1837 against the overseers, the governor threatened a military response.

It distributed 2,000 acres (8.1 km2) of their 13,000-acre (53 km2) property in allotments of 60-acre (240,000 m2) parcels to heads of households, so that each family could have individual ownership for subsistence farming.

In the early 1900s, tribal members Ebenezer Quippish and Nelson D. Simons helped lead a cultural revival in Mashpee and to rededicate the Old Indian Meeting House.

In 1976, the tribe filed a landmark land claim lawsuit, suing the Town of Mashpee for the return of ancestral homelands.

The US District Court ruled that, lacking federal recognition as a tribe, the Mashpee Wampanoag people had no standing to pursue the land claim.

Marshall led the group until 2007, when it was disclosed that he had a prior conviction for rape, had lied about having a military record, and was under investigation associated with the tribe's casino lobbying efforts.

[5][6] Marshall had steered tens of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to politicians through the tribe's hired lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

[5] The latter was convicted of numerous charges in a much larger fraud scheme associated with Native American gaming, especially related to his representation of a Mississippi tribe.

[7] Led by its chairman Shawn Hendricks, who was elected to succeed Marshall, tribe representatives worked with Abramoff's lobbyist colleague Kevin A.

Ring to pursue a plan to develop Indian gaming, as this seemed a route to generate revenues to help the tribe take care of its people.

He worked to distance himself from the previous chairmen, although he had served on the tribal council for the prior six years during which the Marshall and Abramoff scandals took place.

[10] A challenge to Cromwell's election by defeated candidates, following allegations of tampering with voting and enrollment records, was filed with the Tribal Court.

In 2013, the Mashpee tribe and the state formed a compromise that would see the group giving Massachusetts "17 percent of all casino revenue" generated.

"Tribal lands once stretched from Cape Ann to Rhode Island, and this new reservation represents only a dot on the map, but it feels really good.

"[13] On March 27, 2020, the Bureau of Indian Affairs reportedly told the tribe that their reservation will be dis-established and their land taken out of trust, per an order from Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt.

"[16] "This is an existential crisis for tribes," said Jean-Luc Pierite, of the North American Indian Center of Boston, a Boston-based social services provider and advocacy group.

According to the indictment, Cromwell contracted with an architecture company owned by David DeQuattro, in connection with the Wampanoag Tribe’s plans to build a resort and casino in Taunton.

[20] In May 2021, Brian Weeden was elected chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag’s Tribal Council, as the youngest person ever to serve in this capacity.

It contains a general prohibition against gaming on lands acquired into trust by federally recognized tribes after October 17, 1988, the date of the act.

[24] In November 2011, the Massachusetts legislature passed a law to license up to three sites, each in a separate region of the state, for gaming resort casinos and one for a slot machine parlor.

They challenged the land-into-trust deal, citing Carcieri v. Salazar (2009), a U.S. Supreme Court decision which held that the government could not take land into trust for tribes recognized after the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act.

[34] On March 27, 2020, the Trump administration announced it would remove over 300 acres of land from the federal trust and take away the designation of "reservation."